ABSTRACT
Letters are essential to help us understand the working of early-modern and Enlightenment society and literature. They enabled scholars to communicate across borders and generate a common culture. They offered a means for princes and priests to issue orders or give guidance. Alongside public letters, printed in the press to guarantee maximum impact, private correspondences allowed individuals to give their point of view or expose their feelings. As literacy levels increased, they were written by women and domestic servants as well as educated men. Letters were a much appreciated literary form, a model for poems, but also the basis for sentimental novels which were widely read and translated throughout Europe: fiction writers were able to show their characters’ unmediated expression through the letters they were supposed to have written.
