Introduction

This book is a study of letter-writing. Its main source is the set of letters to and from Bess of Hardwick that were handwritten between the 1550s and 1608, which are extraordinary for the variety of activities they document, their breadth of social contacts and their range of interpersonal functions. So while the focus chosen illuminates the letter-writing activities of one individual, at the same time, the materials that have been selected give us a remarkably wide-ranging view of letters written in English in this period. The book examines not only the substantive content of the letters but also the modes and methods by which they were composed, written and read. It is concerned with the visual and material features of the letters, and the processes of their production and reception, but also with the services provided by scribes and bearers. It is concerned with the constellation of forms of handwriting across the letters, by an array of scribes, senders and secretaries, and the associated varieties of English that appear. It is concerned with the forms of language, but also with how these formal features functioned to textualise relationships, encode relative status and construct identities, as well as the potentials and the limitations offered for the expression of emotion. It is concerned with situating the letters within their precise historical moments, but also with their archival afterlives and their treatment (sometimes specious) by later editors. As the letters extended across almost sixty years, they offer a view from different vantage points over a lifetime. The focus is sometimes on events that were remarkable and dramatic and that take us into the heart of Elizabethan political culture, but at other times on the ordinary, routine and everyday. As the letters were written from a series of households, they existed alongside other literate cultures and communities and this book is concerned to position epistolary writing on a continuum with these. This book is concerned with the meanings of material culture, the intersection of gender and genre, the negotiation of interpersonal relationships, and the interrelations between scribal cultures and varieties of early modern English. As such, it incorporates insights generated through the deployment of a range of approaches, material, linguistic and palaeographic, which are brought to bear upon the early modern letter.