ABSTRACT
Private letters by women were first published solely as sources, responding to the interests of nineteenth-century Hispanists and the political histories of early modern Spain whose purposes were far removed from women's writing and epistolary correspondence. The practices of epistolary writing and the various functions of noblewomen's letters in Golden Age Spain have been reconstructed by drawing from the history of written culture. The sociocultural possibilities and conditions of women's epistolary writing at that time proved to be very similar to those of the rest of patriarchal Europe. Spanish women, mainly noblewomen, knew epistolary rhetoric perfectly and knew how to make superb use of different types of letter, depending on the recipient and the subject to be treated. The familiar letters written in Catalan by Estefania de Requesens to her mother Hipolita Rois de Liori, Countess of Palamos, were published in Spain. Other private letters of interest are those sent by Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza to her brother, Alonso.
