After having finished an essay on gender variation, I started reading through the Browning Letters again (taking it a couple of letters at a time). Their letters are filled with humorous phrases: “to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature, “gr-r- you … 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
While browsing through my bookmarks looking for letter corpora, I re-encountered a great resource: The Carlyle Letters Online. This digital archive contains over 10,000 of the collected letters of the important Victorian couple Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. The content … 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 reading the ‘Browning Love Letters” I noticed that a “Penny Black” postage stamp was adhered to its envelope. The Penny Black was the first stick on -postage stamp ever used. I knew of its existence, but not when it … 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
Anyone interested in pauper letters will come across Thomas Sokoll’s book Essex Pauper Letters, 1731-1837, published in 2001. An online review of the book came out in HistoricalSociolinguistics/Sociohistorical Linguistics two years later. But the book is also cited as important introductory reading … Continue reading
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I am not talking about Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guinevere or Paris and Helena. These two are not as widely known, but their story “is surely one of the most fascinating love-stories in the world” (Kenmare 1957:7). This is … Continue reading
During the last few weeks of the course Letters as Sociohistorical-Linguistic Documents, I’ve been reminded of the many special linguistic insights which letters are able to provide. We’ve read,* for example, about how letters may provide evidence for reconstructing social … Continue reading
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Today I received a surprise package in my mail! Of course, I remembered ordering a copy of Penholder’s Everybody’s Letter Writer: being a Complete Guide to Letter Writing, but the website (abebooks.com) had told me that it would take 10 to … Continue reading
Late Modern English letters 