Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Reading and re-reading correspondence: The project underpinning this volume -- 2. Features of epistolary discourse as key for a cohesive approach -- 3. The contributions in this volume: An overview -- References -- The study of correspondence: theoretical and methodological issues -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The study of correspondence: challenges and opportunities -- 2.1 Source processing -- 2.2 Terminology -- 2.3 The material world of the text -- 2.4 Focus on language -- 3. Concluding remarks -- References -- A historical digital archive of Portuguese letters -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 Epistolary sources -- 2. The CARDS corpus -- 3. Analysing the CARDS corpus -- References -- Between linguistic creativity and formulaic restriction -- 1. Research questions -- 2. Corpus and socio-communicative frame of nineteenth-century emigrant letters (in Germany and elsewhere) -- 3. Topics and dominating textual functions -- 4. Formulae and formulaic writing -- 4.1 Formulae constituting texts and text types -- 4.2 Context-sensitive formulaic language -- 5. Letter-writing traditions and the sources of formulae -- 6. A note on grammatical analysis and the role of formulaic language -- 7. Final note -- References -- Performing Identities and Interaction through Epistolary Formulae -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Background of writing in finnish -- 3. Formulae and their models in letter writing -- 4. Person marking and group style -- 5. Educated writers and audience design -- 6. Conclusions -- References -- Appendix -- Karvijalta maaliskuun10 p 1890 -- Hartaasti Lempivä Miehenin F Oskar H. -- Fanny to William -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Discursive practice in Fanny's letters -- 3. Choice of topics in Fanny's letters.

4. Concluding remarks -- References -- An atypical commercial correspondence: negotiating artefacts and status -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Corpus and methods -- 3. Analysis -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Reporting the news in English and Italian diplomatic correspondence -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Blackwell's correspondence to the secretary of state -- 3. Francesco terriesi's correspondence to the secretary of state -- 4. Conclusions -- References -- Primary sources -- Secondary sources -- Letters as Loot -- 1. Tracing linguistic variation -- 2. Confiscated letters in times of war -- 3. The linguistic perspective -- 4. The letters as loot-corpus -- 5. Writing experience in the last decades of the eighteenth century -- 6. H-dropping in letters to and from zeeland -- 7. N-deletion in letters from three female scribes -- 8. Variation in the use of epistolary formulae -- 9. Conclusions -- References -- The problem of reading dialect in semiliterate letters -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Early nineteenth-century Lancashire -- 2.1 Industrialisation -- 2.2 Evangelicalism -- 2.3 Literacy and the early-nineteenth-century working classes -- 3. The corpus -- 4. Evidence for linguistic variation and change -- 4.1 Phonological -- 4.2 Syntax and Morphology -- 4.3 Lexical use -- 4.4 Archaisms -- 4.5 Missing local features -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- I will be expecting a letter from you before this reaches you" A corpus-based study of shall/will variation in Irish English correspondence -- 1. Why a diachronic corpus of irish english correspondence? -- 2. CORIECOR: a brief description -- 3. Diachronic work on shall/will in IrE and other Englishes -- 3.1 Shall and will in history -- 3.2 Irish usage from prescriptive grammar to the corpus era -- 3.3 What happened to shall in IrE? -- 3.4 Summary -- 4. Pilot study: shall and will in IrE.

4.1 Preliminaries and general distribution -- 4.2 Multivariate analysis of shall/will in late eighteenth century IrE -- 4.2.1 Intimacy -- 4.2.2 Place -- 4.2.3 Verb -- 4.2.4 Gender -- 4.2.5 Clause type -- 4.2.6 Verb stativity -- 4.2.7 Summary -- 5. IrE and other late eighteenth-century Englishes -- 5.1 A borrowed comparative analysis of four varieties plus one -- 5.2 Irish influence on early Canadian English? -- 6. Overseas spread and linguistic implications -- 7. Conclusions -- References -- Letters in mechanically-schooled language -- 1. The problem -- 2. Present schemes of ideas, assumptions etc -- 2.1 Limitation to writing -- 2.2 Limitation to print -- 3. Schemes of ideas: theories and ideologies -- 3.1 Old schemes -- 3.1.1 Theory/ideology -- 3.1.2 Ideological/autonomous -- 3.2 New schemes of ideas -- 4. Literacies in England: lower-, middle- and higher-class -- 4.1 Schooling the lower classes -- 4.2 Schooling the higher and middle classes -- 5. Letters -- 6. Roles -- 7. A lexical division -- 8. Analysis of the eighteen letters -- 9. Summary -- Appendix -- References -- Teaching grammar and composition through letter writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The seventeenth century -- 3. The eighteenth century -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Primary sources -- Secondary sources -- Index.