Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications [Paperback]

William Merrill Decker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 1998

Letters have long been read as primary sources for biography and history, but their performative, fictive, and textual dimensions have only recently attracted serious notice. In this book, William Merrill Decker examines the place of the personal letter in American popular and literary culture from the colonial to the postmodern period.

After offering an overview of the genre, Decker explores epistolary practices that coincide with American experiences of space, settlement, separation, and reunion. He discusses letters written by such well-known and well-educated persons as John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail and John Adams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens, Henry James, and Alice James, but also letters by persons who, except in their correspondence, were not writers at all: indentured servants, New England factory workers, slaves, soldiers, and Western pioneers. Individual chapters explore the letter writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry Adams—three of America's most ambitious, accomplished, and theoretically astute letter writers. Finally, Decker considers the ongoing transformation of letter writing in the electronic age.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Epistolary Practices must be judged a stunning success.

Prose Studies

[Decker] examines with insight and wit the role of letter writing and what it reveals about human relations.

Choice

Decker's rich and thoughtful analysis sets the standard for discussions to come.

Joanne Jacobson, author of Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams

This is a valuable book for anyone interested in nineteenth-century writing styles.

Joel Myerson, editor of The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson

From the Inside Flap

Using letters written by John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail and John Adams, and others, Å this book examines the place of the personal letter in American popular and literary culture from the colonial to the postmodern period. Decker explores epistolary practices that coincide with American experiences of space, settlement, separation, and reunion.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (October 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807847437
• ISBN-13: 978-0807847435
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,266,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent study, November 10, 2009

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dpk - See all my reviews

This review is from: Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications (Paperback)

This is a wonderfully subtle study that deserves a wide audience. Extremely sophisticated theoretically but never overbearing or doctrinaire, Decker also writes beautifully and reads carefully. An essential book for anyone interested in letters and poems, and the relationship between them.