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Review of:

Susan M. Fitzmaurice (2002), The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. vii + 258 pp. ISBN 90 272 5115.

(August 2005, HSL/SHL 5)

The title of the book echoes that of a collection of articles edited by Anderson, Daghlian and Ehrenpreis, The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century (1966). While the earlier book deals with individual letter writers from the eighteenth century, Fitzmaurice primarily focuses on the second half of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth. But the echo begs the question of comparing the way in which the familiar letter is perceived as a concept in both books. Fitzmaurice defines the familiar letter as a type of letter, “both fictional and real, [being] a pragmatic act that is embodied in a text that responds to a previous text, whether spoken or written, and at the same time anticipates new texts” (2002:1). In her study she deals with a wide variety of epistolary text types, such as letters intended to give compliments, make accusations, provide self-presentations and self-revelations, give advice, and obtain patronage. In addition, she includes letters offered as sample letters in letter writing manuals. The definition in Anderson, Daghlian and Ehrenpreis of the genre is more strictly limited, as the word “familiar” suggests, and it includes only personal letters that are non-fictional, with petitions to patrons being specifically excluded (Anderson and Ehrenpreis 1966:273-274). Another difference is, obviously, the approach of the two books: dealing with individuals, the collection of articles is more literarily oriented, while Fitzmaurice deals with letters from a pragmatic angle, treating them as exchanges between the correspondents that can be analysed in their full context. The central question raised is to what extent an exchange of letters can be considered comparable to a conversation, which is how, according to Anderson and Ehrenpreis (1966:274), the writers and recipients at the time viewed it themselves.

The theoretical framework of Fitzmaurice’s study is that of modern pragmatic research models, such as Grice’s theory of implicature, Searle’s speech act theory, and politeness theory as developed by Browne & Gilman and Browne & Levinson. Basic material for the book are excerpts from letters to Anne Conway (1653), letters by Margaret Cavendish from her letter collection called CCXI Sociable Letters (1664), a letter to a young physician published  in 1727, letters exchanged between Addison, Swift and their patron Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, as well as one by William Wycherly to Charles Montagu (1701-1710), letters by Swift and Addison to Ambrose Philips (1708-1710), letters from Dorothy Osborne to William Temple (1653) and letters between Edward Wortley and Lady Mary Pierrepont, later Wortley Montagu (1710). All these letters are reproduced at the end of each chapter dealing with the correspondence in question. But that is not all: Fitzmaurice also provides close analyses of letters between other correspondents, such as Steele and his wife Prue, and she shows that Anderson and Ehrenpreis (1966:275) were wrong when they claimed that such letters are “of the least possible interest to anyone besides the correspondents and of only transient interest to them”. Fitzmaurice is at her very best when providing close-readings of letters like these, as her analysis of the inferences made in the letters and on the letters make the writers and addressees and their attempts at communicating with each other come truly alive. In this the book can be called highly successful, the approach taken leading to insightful results and calling for more.

But the book also raises a lot of questions, both of a somewhat technical nature and as far as the approach taken in the various chapters. To begin with, the author acknowledges the help of various people for “transcribing the letters from microfilm and handwritten notes for use in this study” (2002:vii); yet, among the letters reproduced only one letter, by William Wycherly to Charles Montagu, was not previously published, and a few others, those by Margaret Cavendish and the letter to the young physician only ever appeared in editions published at the time. As for the remaining letters analysed, which are already available in modern editions what was the added interest of transcribing them once again? In the case of a passage of seventeen lines from a letter by Swift to Halifax, found on pp. 144-145 of the book, there are as many as twenty-three differences with the edition of the correspondence published by Harold Williams in 1963. Most of them concern differences in the use of capitals and punctuation, but there are also spelling differences (extream/extreme, around/round, disobledged/disoblidged) and the omission of the word other further down in the passage. Are these instances corrections of the transcription made by Williams or errors made by Fitzmaurice’s transcribers? One interesting point emerges from the new transcription, i.e. Swift’s change of if I am permitted into if I were permitted, which is rightly, I think, described as a change from “an optimistic indicative to the much more tentative subjunctive” rather than as a correction of a grammatical mistake(2002:145). This change is not commented on by Williams in his edition, and it shows Swift struggling with “the complex rules of politeness” (2002:154) of the period. The point could have been made here in favour of more closely reproducing the text of Early or Late Modern letters, as is done by Ingamells and Edgcumbe in their edition of the letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds (2000) (see Tieken-Boon van Ostade forthc.) or in Cusack (1998). What is of particular interest, though, is that the letters seeking patronage from Charles Montagu are here treated as a single document (Chapter 5): thus far, the letters by his patron-seekers, Addison, Swift, Steele and Pope, were reproduced in separate editions. It makes good sense from a pragmatic perspective to analyse them together.

The book contains a number of illustrations, portraits of several but not all of its protagonists; missing are those of Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, Edward Montagu and others. Other than as pure illustrations, the plates seem to have no function in the context of the book, with the exception of Sir Wiliam Temple, in which case his portrait serves to show that Dorothy Osborne’s letters do not represent a one-sided correspondence as in the case of those of Margaret Cavendish with which they are compared. Temple’s letters did not survive: Dorothy Osborne burnt them to avoid the discovery of their secret courtship (2002:188). This is one of the problems discussed by Fitzmaurice which modern scholars face when trying to analyse a correspondence in its fullest possible form. The plates also include a watercolour portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; in itself, this is an interesting document, as it was done during the nineteenth century. But why it was made or its very significance as a possible testimony of Lady Mary’s lasting fame is not commented on. Nor are the sources of the portraits’ originals  revealed.

What is not made clear is on what grounds the letters discussed were selected. As it is, the courtship letters of Dorothy Osborne and William Temple and of  Edward Wortley and Lady Mary Pierrepont are represented by only two and five letters respectively, and the question arises as to how representative the selections made are (as well as how these very letters compare as a genre, a question that would have been interesting to deal with). If another letter by Dorothy Osborne had been selected, she might have emerged in quite a different light, as the following conclusion to a letter to Temple suggests: “I have a scurvy head that will not let mee write longer” (30 April 1753; as quoted in Freeborn 1992:155). Fitzmaurice, moreover, comments on the lack of scholarly interest in Dorothy Osborne’s writing (2002:177); the webpage on her language, produced by Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, expert on the language of Dorothy Osborne, testifies to the contrary.

Finally, a few smaller issues may be drawn attention to, such as the spelling of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s name beneath the nineteenth-century watercoulour, the publisher of Addison’s letters being Clarendon Press not Oxford University Press, Priestley not being a prescriptive grammarian (2002:3) and a number of errors in the index, such as the reference to Ehrenpreis which occurs on p. 64, not 63.

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, English Department/LUCL, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. (Contact the reviewer.) 

References:

Anderson, Howard, and Irvin Ehrenpreis. 1966. “The familiar letter in the eighteenth century: some generalizations”. In: Anderson, Howard, Philip B. Daghlian and Irvin Ehrenpreis (eds.). 1966. The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 269–282.

Cusack, Bridget. 1998. Everyday English 1500-1700. A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Freeborn, Dennis. 1992. From Old English to Standard English. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Ingamells, John and John Edgcumbe (eds.). 2000. The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Yale University Press.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (forthc.). “Eighteenth-century English letters: In search of the vernacular”, Linguistica e Filologia.