Women and Letters in Print

Over the period 1500–1700 the letter was one of the most pervasive print genres. From the outset women’s letters were represented in the various modes of print letter, ranging from epistolary manuals, miscellanies, and parodies to letters of friendship, love, and learning. Print letters harked back to the classical precedents of Ovid and Cicero that conferred dignity upon the practice, and those attributed to women gave public demonstration of their capacity for learning, wit, judgment, rhetoric, and astute social dialogue, and publicized their citizenship in the “republic of letters.”