Epistolarity in the Eighteenth Century

You’ve got mail! The trope of a bag of letters opened to the reader’s gaze is surprisingly common in eighteenth-century literature. This course looks at a selection of eighteenth-century letters, letter-writing manuals, famous newspaper correspondence, and fictions and dramas that depend upon letters to examine what makes epistolary form so fascinating. Texts will include works by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, and others.