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The first major socio-cultural study of manuscript letters and letter-writing practices in early modern England. Daybell examines a crucial period in the development of the English vernacular letter before Charles I´s postal reforms in 1635, one that witnessed a significant extension of letter-writing skills throughout society.

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List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction Materials and Tools of Letter-Writing Epistolary Writing Technologies Interpreting Materiality and Social Signs Postal Conditions Secret Letters Copying, Letter-Books and the Scribal Circulation of Letters The Afterlives of Letters Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index

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"The Material Letter provides a guide to the protean messiness of correspondence in a period which saw English epistolary habits and technologies undergo drastic change. ... a remarkable achievement and will be an essential reference tool for anyone studying or editing English correspondence from this period. It poses important and difficult questions to would-be editors and encourages scholars familiar with printed letters to return to the archive in search of a wide range of previously neglected material signs." (Kelsey Jackson Williams, History, Vol. 100 (341), July, 2015)

"...a valuable reference work and stimulus to further research." Thomas O. Beebee, Renaissance Quarterly

"The main strength of the book is the breadth of archival material that Daybell harnesses: it is based on an examination of well over 10,000 manuscript letters. Taken together, the chapters unpretentiously demonstrate a wealth of knowledge, and the result

is a work of immense academic generosity. Its clarity will make it a perfect introduction to the study of letters for students and scholars coming to this subject for the first time: it assumes no prior knowledge, it is logically structured, and each chapter ends with a clear summary. Moreover, the bibliography is huge, and Daybell even goes so far as to describe to his readers how to go about doing the kind of archival research he suggests, listing a range of helpful finding aids (225 6). The dutifulness of the book means that there is hardly anything I would want to see added." Ruth Ahnert, SHARP News

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JAMES DAYBELL is professor of Early Modern British History at Plymouth University, UK, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is author of Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (2006); editor of Early Modern Women´s Letter-Writing, 1450-170(2001), Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700 (2004), and (with Peter Hinds) Material Readings of Early Modern Culture, 1580-1730 (2010).

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