This collection of essays participates in the ongoing debate about the epistolary form, challenging readers to rethink the traditional association between the letter and the private sphere. It also pushes the boundaries of that debate by having the contributors respond to each other within the volume, thus creating a critical community between covers that replicates the dialogic nature of epistolary itself, with all its dissonances and differences as well as its connections. Focusing mainly on Anglo-American texts from the 17th century to modern times, these nine essays and their "postscripts" engage the relationship between epistolary texts and discourses of gender, class, politics and commodification.
Ranging from epistolary histories of Mary Queen of Scots to Turkish travelogues, from the making of the modern middle class and the correspondence of Melville and Hawthorne to new epistolary innovators such as Kathy Acker and Orlan, the contributions are divided into three parts: Part One addresses the "feminocentric" focus of the letter; Part Two, the boundaries between the fictional and the real; and Part Three, the ways in which the epistolary genre may help us think more clearly about questions of critical address and discourse that have preoccupied theorists in recent years.