ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Dorothy Osborne opportunistically took advantage of her imaginations of epistolary spaces in order vicariously to experience the emergence of a new and vibrant metropolitan culture. Taken together they pinpoint Osborne's desire to open up the kinds of epistolary spaces between her and Sir William Temple that had only been hinted at to her in her earlier once-a-week letters. The effect of such an arrangement was to bring down an immediate and deadening portcullis on Osborne's imagination of any epistolary spaces. That connection with London was one of the overriding motors for the growth of imaginations of epistolary spaces in the first hundred years of the Post Office is evidenced by Osborne's letters to Temple. That Osborne did share such a fascination with London with Philips is clearly evidenced by much that is to be found in her letters to Temple.
