Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 15001850 [Paperback]

This book explores epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon across Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.Thomas O. Beebee offers a history of epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon across Europe from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century. He shows how epistolary fiction appropriated the status and power the letter had already acquired, and goes on to explore a number of related discourses and themes, including the letter-writing manual, self-referential aspects of the letter, news and travel reporting, the relationship between letters and gender, and historically-specific letter-writing by eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors including Austen, Balzac, and Dostoevsky. There is a bibliography of major European epistolary fiction to 1850.Thomas O. Beebee offers a history of epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon across Europe from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century. He shows how epistolary fiction appropriated the status and power the letter had already acquired, and goes on to explore a number of related discourses and themes, including the letter-writing manual, self-referential aspects of the letter, news and travel reporting, the relationship between letters and gender, and historically-specific letter-writing by eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors including Austen, Balzac, and Dostoevsky. There is a bibliography of major European epistolary fiction to 1850.Thomas O. Beebee offers a history of epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon practiced across Europe from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century. He shows how epistolary fiction appropriated the status and power the letter had already acquired, and goes on to explore a number of related discourses and themes, including the letter writing manual, self-referential aspects of the letter, news and travel reporting, the relationship between letters and gender, and historically-specific letter writing by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors including AustlÍ