A Letter Book / Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing

An extended introduction surveys the history and art of letter-writing and then presents curated selections spanning antiquity to the nineteenth century, with notes that treat letters as both personal testimony and models of style. The book groups material by period and type—ancient Greek and Latin examples, medieval and early modern English correspondence, eighteenth-century letters, and early and later nineteenth-century selections—plus special kinds and an appendix. Selected letters by a range of notable writers and ordinary correspondents illustrate techniques, forms, and occasions of epistolary exchange, while the prefatory commentary uses these examples to show how good letters are composed rather than to impose prescriptive rules.