Letters are physical artefacts, and carry meaning both in their text, and in their material features. This project investigates material practices of letter-writing in 17th-century England by combining archival research on manuscript letters with resources and quantitative methods from historical sociolinguistics. The results reveal a previously invisible source that will benefit all historical studies that use letters. Two kinds of new knowledge are produced: an overview of early modern English epistolary material practices and how they changed over time, and a detailed survey of how practices varied according to their social contexts. These results will function as a 'key' to deciphering the social meaning of material practices in letter-writing, which will be valuable to literary, cultural and social historians as well as historical linguists, and which will enrich our understanding of past societies.

2022

2025