European women's letter-writing from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries

Clare Monagle, Carolyn James, David Garrioch, Barbara Caine

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    Abstract

    This book reveals the importance of personal letters in the history of European women between the year 1000 and the advent of the telephone. It explores the changing ways that women used correspondence for self-expression and political mobilization over this period, enabling them to navigate the myriad gendered restrictions that limited women's engagement in the world. Whether written from the medieval cloister, or the renaissance court, or the artisan's workshop, or the drawing room, letters crossed geographical and social distance and were mobile in ways that women themselves could not always be. Women wrote to govern, to argue, to plead, and to demand. They also wrote to express love and intimacy, and in so doing, to explain and to understand themselves. This book argues that the personal letter was a crucial place for European women's self-fashioning, and that exploring the history of their letters offers a profound insight into their subjectivity and agency over time
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationAmsterdam
    PublisherAmsterdam University Press
    Number of pages296
    ISBN (Electronic)9789048556427
    ISBN (Print)9789463723381
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2023

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2023. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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