Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, and Early Modern Epistolary Culture

Description

Bess of Hardwick's Letters is the first book-length study of the c. 250 letters to and from the remarkable Elizabethan dynast, matriarch and builder of houses Bess of Hardwick (c. 1527 1608). By surveying the complete correspondence, author Alison Wiggins uncovers the wide range of uses to which Bess put letters: they were vital to her engagement in the overlapping realms of politics, patronage, business, legal negotiation, news-gathering and domestic life. Much more than a case study of Bess's letters, the discussions of language, handwriting and materiality found here have fundamental implications for the way we approach and read Renaissance letters. Wiggins offers readings which show how Renaissance letters communicated meaning through the interweaving linguistic, palaeographic and material forms, according to socio-historical context and function. The study goes beyond the letters themselves and incorporates a range of historical sources to situate circumstances of production and reception, which include Account Books, inventories, needlework and textile art and architecture. The study is therefore essential reading for scholars in historical linguistics, historical pragmatics, palaeography and manuscript studies, material culture, English literature and social history." Cover Title Copyright Contents List of plates Acknowledgements Conventions Abbreviations Introduction 1 Composing and scripting letters 1.1 ‘Sett downe the matter plainly’: situating epistolary composition within the genre of early modern letter-writing 1.2 ‘As yf she were my owne and only chyld’: a letter of petition to Sir Francis Walsingham written on behalf of her granddaughter Arbella Stuart, 1582 1.3 ‘I am the furst innosent wyffe, that euar was so very extremly vsed in thys realme, god make me the last’: a letter to her estranged husband the earl of Shrewsbury written during their marital discord, 1585 1.4 ‘My good sweete daughter . . . blesse you deare harte’: a letter to her daughter Mary, countess of Shrewsbury, 1607 2 Reading and writing letters 2.1 ‘A little deske to write on guilded’: situating epistolary production within textual cultures at Hardwick Hall, c. 1601 2.2 ‘Your honour’s hand’: autograph writing and Bess of Hardwick’s idiolect 2.3 ‘I am not able nowe to write . . . with my owne hande’: scribal writing and idiolects 2.4 Letters from ‘the palace of the sky’: Bess of Hardwick’s signature 3 Sending and receiving letters 3.1 ‘Geven to one that brought a letter’: situating epistolary reception within early modern postal and delivery networks 3.2 ‘Delyver therwith vnto him, so great thankes & good wordes as yow can devyse’: letters with bearers 3.3 ‘A note that came with the stuff’: letters with enclosures 3.4 ‘Hauinge no betar menes to manifast mi thanckefolnes’: letters with floss and accordion folds Conclusions Bibliography Index Plates