Workshop on visual and material aspects of letter-writing in early modern Britain

All visual and material aspects of early modern letters can carry meaning. Physical features, such as the type and quality of the paper; visual features, like layout, or the choice of script and hand; and material practices, like letterlocking: how the letter was folded and secured. In the past, the value of these non-linguistic parts of the letter was not understood, and text of the letter was the sole focus of research. More recently, we have come to understand how the medium and form of an early modern letter are an integral part of the message.

This workshop is designed to boost research in epistolary materiality through knowledge exchange. The focus is on discussion rather than full seminar papers, and the participants are asked to consider visual and material aspects of early modern letters in advance, and to share their questions, problems, discoveries, concerns, serendipities, revelations, thoughts, and opinions at the workshop by bringing in examples they have encountered in their work.

Possible discussion topics and themes include:

• Physical aspects (paper, ink, sealing wax)
• Material practices (folding, writing, letterlocking, enclosing)
• Visual aspects (script, hand, layout, use of space, flourishes, significant space)
• Afterlives (endorsements, filing, archival markings)
• Variation and change (over time, regionally, between social groups)
• Material practices and social factors (gender, social rank, region/country, religion)
• International trends and influences
• Material practices and language
• Contemporary instructions and attitudes
• Text types and domains (letter-like documents, letters in literature, letters in art)
• Working on epistolary materiality: shared standards, terminology; methods (reading folds, quantifying practices, digital methods); ethics (what to do with sealed letters); sharing knowledge (regular conference?)

Background & Aims

This workshop is part of the postdoctoral project of Dr Sam Kaislaniemi (University of Eastern Finland) called “Material practices meet sociolinguistics: Letter-writing in seventeenth-century England”, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2022–2025). In his project, he uses a corpus of over 3,000 personal letters chosen from over a hundred archival collections to survey visual and material practices in letter-writing over the seventeenth century. I chart how these practices varied across time and space, and how they changed over time. I also look at how social variables correlate with letter-writing practices – e.g. differences between writers from different genders, or social ranks.

Having worked with archival sources for nearly twenty years, I am struck by the endless variation and diversity of manuscript practices. I believe that although some material practices of letter-writing were near-universal in the early modern period, what was common or typical could vary greatly between different time periods, social networks, communities, and regions. When we use certain manuscript collections regularly, we become familiar with the practices and features we encounter there. However, this becomes a kind of conditioning, so that when we view completely different manuscript collections we can be surprised by how differently their writers have done things.

This means that i) what we come to conceive of as ‘normal’ or ‘typical’ in the archival sources we use may indeed be normal and typical – or alternatively rare, idiosyncratic, or restricted to a specific context. And ii) it is exceedingly difficult to form a reliable understanding of the whole range of practices and features that were salient to people in the past, that carried social or cultural meaning, given manuscript material as diverse as epistolary correspondence.

This workshop arises from a desire to find out more about the range of such practices, and to see if we can identify material aspects of letter-writing that were particularly meaningful, and establish some baselines for the study of epistolary materiality. The workshop also has a concrete aim: participants are encouraged to consider contributing to an edited volume or journal special issue devoted to early modern
epistolary materiality. This will be discussed in the final session of the workshop.

This in-person workshop is free to attend, but please register in advance by sending an email to samuli.kaislaniemi@uef.fi 

Bursaries may be available for PhD students, ECRs, and independent scholars.

This event is taking place in collaboration with the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters.

UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges is dedicated to the study of the diverse cultural, economic and social exchanges between early modern states in the Old World and beyond in the period 1450-1800. Our work focuses on how complex intercultural interactions from translation to trade began to create borders and frontiers between countries, vernacular literatures and identities in this period.

The Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL) develops projects focused on making archives matter, concentrating on the years 1500 to 1800.