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This introductory chapter shows how a culture of letters and literacy that included lower and middling-sort letter writers was created in England by 1800. It examines the epistolary tradition in English culture and the rise of the post office. The concept of epistolary literacy is introduced and defined. The discovery of thousands of letters in unknown archives below the rank of gentry provided the source material for the book. They will be used to show why people wrote letters, how they used them, and their impact on individuals, families, and society.

This chapter considers how letters became literary at a time when letters and literature were closely aligned. It suggests that epistolary literacy can offer new insights into the rise of the novel. It introduces Jane Johnson, an untrained Buckinghamshire mother who writes a story about Clarissa, composes original poems, and keeps records of her reading. Her epistolary practices are analyzed in relation to the epistolary writings of the novelist Samuel Richardson. The chapter concludes that provincial women like Johnson were not only influenced by literature; they had a powerful impact on literary culture. When Richardson's historical insights are connected to Johnson's epistolary literacy, the study of the novel is enriched.

This chapter shows how middling-sort merchants, writing clerks, and dissenters used letters to work out problems regarding business, religion, gender and class. Letters of four generations of Tucker stone merchants reveal how an Anglican Weymouth family constructed social relationships, personal identities, and political aspirations through epistolary language. The Congregational Bateman and Wilson families of Manchester and London used letters to cope with anxieties about gender, business and, especially, personal salvation. Letters of the Quaker Follows family of East Anglia and Leicestershire were their primary link to a Quaker way of life, and reveal tense family relationships. The chapter shows how religious differences produced distinctive modes of letter writing. Epistolary literacy is proposed as a criterion for inclusion in the middling-sort. It was a unifying attribute and powerful weapon in their businesses, families, and spiritual lives.

This chapter contrasts Jane Johnson's quiet reading and writing with the fast-paced public literary culture of her children — Robert and Barbara — and the patroness of their Bath poetry salon, Anna Miller. Changes in literary practices over the century, from the growth of epistolary fiction to the era of sensibility by the 1790s, are revealed through writings and reading records of Jane Johnson's children. It is suggested that the travelogue, methods of literary criticism, and the language of sentiment were influenced and shaped by letters. As sites of unsupervised reading, independent opinions, and cultural desires, letters had a political impact. Epistolary literacy thus provided a base for a free and active electorate at a time when political participation was still limited.