William Clift (1775-1849) has been mentioned several times on this blog already. One of the reasons his language is interesting is that by studying the letters you can see how he substitutes one linguistic model, that of his sister Elizabeth … Continue reading
This week, we are reading Anita Auer’s article on self-corrections in Late Modern English letters (Auer 2008). In this article, Auer discusses three case studies, and one of them concerns the letters of Lucy Whitaker (1759-1837), the wife of a … Continue reading
Great news: Leiden University Library owns two letters from the most authoritative 18th-century English grammarian, Robert Lowth (1710-1787). They were identified accidentally by Myrte Wouterse, BA English and Honours Academy student at the University of Leiden. Myrte and a fellow student had been taken … Continue reading
Frances Austin (1985) points out in her paper named Relative Which in Late 18th Century Usage: The Clift Family Correspondence that the relative pronoun which in the eighteenth century was not predominantly used for inanimate objects (pp.15-29). Instead this relative … Continue reading
King’s Lynn is a small town on the coast of Norfolk in England, about 45 miles North of Cambridge. It used to be one of the four major English harbours, and it has a Hanseatic connection as well as several … Continue reading
A few years ago, Donatella Montini, from the Sapienza Università of Rome, published an edition of letters by Samuel Richardson which focused on the making of Clarissa. For this edition, which came out in 2009, she translated a selection of … Continue reading
While I was searching for an interesting topic for my paper, I came across a book named Letter Writing as a Social Practice. I am interested in the Clift family letters and I explicitly want to focus on William Clift’s written interaction (and … Continue reading
When skimming through Aristocrats by Stella Tillyard 1994, I came upon the name of Madame de Sévigné whose letters were quoted and used as models by English women of noble birth (page 88). The male writers used Latin in their … Continue reading
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In the course Letters as Sociohistorical-Linguistic Documents, we have learned that social status was of great importance in the late modern English society. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that especially experienced writers applied a variety of different styles to … Continue reading
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We have seen the edition of Wesley’s letters from 1721-1755 which Frank Baker put together; we have heard of the online collection of 138 letters that the Bridwell Library put on their website; but – until today – I did not … Continue reading
Late Modern English letters 