How People Faked Their Personalities 200 Years Ago

Thought authenticity died in the age of social media? Come with me and find out why it’s been dead for the last 250 years! We might like to think of letters as factual records of events, documents that reveal the innermost workings of hearts and minds. But a letter can be a finely-tuned performance of identity, a work of fiction like any other. So: Are letters literary? Can a letter be anything other than the proverbial pack of lies? What ‘counts’ as literature? Let’s find out.
Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats
Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
@ma_ps_
mphotos.uk
Bibliography
Brant, Clare, Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (London: Palgrave, 2006)
Curran, Louise, Samuel Richardson and the Art of Letter Writing (Cambridge: CUP, 2016)
Doody, Margaret, ‘An Introduction to Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded’, Discovering Literature: Restoration & 18th Century, British Library www.bl.uk/rest...
Favret, Mary, Romantic Correspondence (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)
Gadd, Ian, ‘The Printer’s Eye’, Ambient Literature research.ambie...
01/04/the-printers-eye
Garfield, Simon, To the Letter: A Curious History of Correspondence (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2013)
Johnson, Samuel, ‘Pope’, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works, ed. by Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2006)
Leighton, Angela, ‘‘Wherever you listen from’: W. S. Graham and the Art of the Letter’, in Letter Writing Among Poets: From William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop, ed. by Jonathan Ellis (Edinburgh: EUP, 2015) pp. 202-15
The Letters of John Keats, ed. by Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)
Monckton Milnes, Richard, Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, ed. by Richard Monckton Milnes, 2. vols (London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1848)
Richardson, Samuel, Letters Written To and For Particular Friends. On the most Important Occasions. Directing not only the Requisite Style and Forms To be Observed in Writing Familiar Letters; But How to Think and Act Justly and Prudently, In The Common Concerns of Human Life (London: 1746)
Romanticism and the Letter, ed. by Madeleine Callaghan and Anthony Howe (London: Palgrave, 2020)
Van Hensbergen, Claudine, ‘Towards an Epistolary Discourse: Receiving the Eighteenth-Century Letter’, Literature Compass, vol. 7 (2010) pp. 508-18
Whyman, Susan, The Pen and the People: English Letter Writers 1660-1800 (Oxford: OUP, 2009)
Wolfson, Susan, ‘Keats the Letter-Writer: Epistolary Poetics’, Romanticism Past and Present, vol. 6 (1982) pp. 43-61

[@thatcasualdragon2975]

I realize this is a year later, but I can't be the only one who got distracted by Mouse at the beginning, waiting to see if she pushed that ink off the desk, right?

[@teresaellis7062]

I love that Mouse has a cushion specifically for her and she would rather sit on the letters. Growing up our neighbor's cat loved to hang out in our backyard. I learned not to try to do my homework outside, even though I wanted to hang out with her while doing my math. She always sat on my book. She knew where most of my attention was! Mouse is like, "You are talking about letters? I better sit on them. They MUST be important!"😂😂

[@katszulga1888]

I knew not to trust Pamela because no honest servant would have had the time in the day to write that bloody much, let alone access to that much paper and ink. The medium of the epistolary novel makes her probably the first unreliable narrator because the length and frequency of the letters makes her a liar in how she tries to present herself in the text of the letters. So glad we had Fielding to clear the palate after Richardson's treacle.

[@libbyhole6131]

Regarding the similarity between letter identities and social media identities, I think it's interesting that the social media equivalent of the epistolary novel is, as far as I'm aware, confined to a fanfic genre of the social media au, and isn't able to gain presence beyond those internet circles.

[@SuziQ.]

I thought she said something quite different- that one could create an identity through social media that is completely or partially fictitious (as in catfishing).

[@ellywhitcombe5007]

Fascinating insight into letters. Great delivery of interesting content, leaving me wanting to know more. I’m also enjoying the production and editing.

[@books_ncats]

Thank you ☺️

[@Kay-kg6ny]

Love the little blooper there. Lol. So fun!

[@ritasallai152]

I have a question: Were Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) actual letters that were sent, or were they just written to look like letters?

[@books_ncats]

Great question! Montagu both had publication on her mind when she wrote the letters AND edited them for publication years after the fact. She also deliberately poses herself as a travel writer worried about being perceived as inauthentic (even though you could argue she was being). It worked though - her letters sold very well! - Rosie

[@Kholan95]

Joseph M. Pierce wrote about this in their dissertation turned book Argentine Intimacies. It's a good read

[@awolpeace1781]

Can't trust the self-reflection of someone in denial

[@Momnpop98]

Why were the titles of these literary works SssOoooooo long? It was like they were trying for the "spoiler alert".

[@KitOfTheWeirdWoods]

I'm guessing there weren't blurbs on the back of books back then, so the title had to do the job of telling people what it's about? Does make me wonder when blurbs started if that is the case.

[@lightbeingform]

I wanna chat with a bot based on those old letter templates

[@petrabotha8314]

Deer coment mummy rosy not giv enogh treat musst true cause is lettr. only tru in lettr pls help luvs moose Mouse didn't fully understand the lecture.

[@books_ncats]

Amazing hahaha - Rosie

[@tamilee2207]

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

[@Sparkling34]

I write my diary mostly to like preserve what my life is now for me (or anyone else) in the future (because I have a horrible memory and know I will forget lol), but while writting my diary I constantly forget to give context and what I do or don't write is very inconsistent, (and my handwritting is near eligible) so my dairies will make nada sense when read lol. This has made me think alot about historical diaries and how accurate they actually are