Journal Facts

Journal
Auto/Biography
ISSN
0967-5507
Volume
12
Issue
3

Article Facts

Title
The Epistolarium: On Theorizing Letters and Correspondences
DOI
10.1191/0967550704ab014oa
Author
Liz Stanley (University of Newcastle, UK, liz.stanley at newcastle.ac.uk)
Pages
201-235

Article Links

The Epistolarium: On Theorizing Letters and Correspondences

Liz Stanley (University of Newcastle, UK, liz.stanley at newcastle.ac.uk)

DOI: 10.1191/0967550704ab014oa

Abstract

Why don't I (do I?) write letters? I do write `a diary, of a kind'; and, while I used to worry about not keeping `a proper diary', this has evolved into something I'm comfortable with, fieldwork notebooks that I write rigorously at important research junctures. However, perhaps emails serve the same purpose for me that letters used to? Or is it that my letters were never very important, being `mainly business', or that I am, oh horror, locked into `personal' writings rather than interpersonal ones? But then, what about my public writing, the articles and book chapters and books that I produce for publication purposes and always with an audience in mind? Could these perhaps be seen as equivalent to the public letters Olive Schreiner occasionally wrote, together with thousands of her `familiar letters'? Certainly, both were part of her shared epistolary construction of a sensibility and a way of life. And to whom is the particular set of thoughts in this article addressed? In it, am `I' eliciting a response from `you' (whoever you are), and to what genre does this way of writing belong? Also, if my papers survive my death and its aftermath, how might this particular communication fare among the rest of the things I've written? If someone should read it a hundred years on, how might they understand it and postulate my intended readers? Then there is the question of how to sign what I've written here — `me' signals wrongly that I' am the only intended reader, but `Liz Stanley' suggests that it is entirely for an unknown other or others, while `Liz' inappropriately indicates familiar knowledge of its readers, and there is no word for `both me and you'. But all these matters are very interesting and I hope other people think so too.

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