Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson's 'Clarissa' by James How (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.3, 2??5 787 This reading of Toby, however, is one of the few false notes within an otherwise fascinating study. Keymer's book makes us want to read more about the 'faddish, unstable literary culture of the 1760s' (p. 149). Whereas Parker exhausts the topic of scepticism, at least in so far as it applies to the authors and works that he reads so closely, Keymer opens up new ways of understanding and reading Tristram Shandy even as it serves as a model for reading other texts. Because these two books appeal to differentscholarly predilections, it is difficultto imagine one person being pleased by both. University of Tennessee John P. Zomchick Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writingfrom the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson's 'Clarissa'. By James How. (Studies in Early Modern English Literature) Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2003. x + 214 pp. ?40. ISBN 0-7546-0354-7. At the opening of his first chapter, James How quotes Anne Finch's poem 'To a Friend in Praise of the Invention of Letters'. It is supremely apt: Blest be the man! His memory at least, Who found the art thus to unfold his breast, And taught succeeding times an easy way Their secret thoughts by letters to convey; To baffleabsence and secure delight Which, till that time, was limited to sight. (p. 20) The chapter in question is devoted to the (largely one-way) correspondence between Dorothy Osborne and her future husband Sir William Temple. Subsequent chapters discuss letter sequences from Etheridge, more or less exiled on government business in Ratisbon; from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in a variety of European cities and from Turkey; between the Countesses of Hertford and Pomfret; from the persistent Reverend Lucius Henry Hibbins to his sometime patron the Duke of Newcastle; and finally as a novelistic device in Clarissa. In all of this there is much to admire, not least the painstaking immersion in social, personal, political, and historical context, particularly, but by no means exclusively, with regard to the foundation of the Post Office and its impact on a range of activities, including, obviously, letter-writing and, less obviously, interception and counter-espionage. The correspondents looked at are, moreover, not quite the usual suspects while still remaining in some measure either central to, or characteristic of, their times and stations. The main disappointment with the book, however, is that it is not about 'Epis? tolary Spaces' as they are commonly under stood. 'Space', when used in terms of forms of creativity, be it poetic, novelistic, artistic or even cinematic, usually refers to the as yet empty potential afforded to the artist, or correspondent, by the chosen form or medium through which the act of construction is enabled to take place and subsequently to be understood by its potential audience, or recipient. It is, then, the expectation of words and meanings that informs our anticipation of 'Epistolary Spaces', as much as of poetic spaces or novelistic ones. How, perversely, insists on talking about epistolary distances. His interest is ostensibly in the miles that separate correspondents and in the extent to which 'an openly available national Post Office with regular and established postal routes' (p. 4) has influenced letter-writingand the reception of letters. This, of course, is not an unworthy object of study, but How, unfortunately, finds much of his material resistant to discussion in this context. Time 788 Reviews aftertime his subjects betray him with their own hands. They have no interest in the miles or the established routes. What interests them is their own 'secret thoughts' and the 'delight' to be secured by sharing them. They focus on the epistolary spaces that are the actual writing they perform and receive, not on the mechanics of how it is to get to its destination. There are many interesting issues raised by epistolary spaces in the sense that the correspondents are engaged with them, including the effectsof absence and the opportunities afforded for manipulation of words and their recipients, and How does indeed engage with these, but only by relinquishing his hold on 'epistolary distance'. The book, in fact, is in an uneasy tension with its title and its apparent...