Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics and the Fiction of Letters (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 1) - Hardcover

Favret, Mary A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521410967 ISBN 13: 9780521410960

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Synopsis

The literary importance of letters did not end with the demise of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel. In the turbulent period between 1789 and 1830, the letter was used as a vehicle for political rather than sentimental expression. Against a background of severe political censorship, seditious Corresponding Societies, and the rise of the modern Post Office, letters as they are used by Romantic writers, especially women, become the vehicle for a distinctly political, often disruptive force. Mary Favret's study of Romantic correspondence reexamines traditional accounts of epistolary writing, and redefines the letter as a 'feminine' genre. The book deals not only with letters which circulated in the novels of Austen or Mary Shelley, but also with political pamphlets, incendiary letters and spy letters available for public consumption.

About this title

Book Description:

This study of correspondence in the Romantic period calls into question the common notion that letters are a particularly 'romantic', personal, and ultimately feminine form of writing.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0521410967
• ISBN 13: 9780521410960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 282