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Letters and Literature 1500-2025: histories, forms, communities
5-7 November 2025
FREE online only conference
Letters have been described in one evocative image as ‘a form in flight’ (Liz Stanley). Seeking to appreciate more fully such descriptions and their importance for literary studies, we aim to bring together in this online event scholars, writers and researchers interested in exploring letters and literature from the sixteenth century to the present day.
This FREE 3-day online international conference’s broad focus is the letter in its material and textual forms, as manifested across literary history—from the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the golden age of epistolary fiction, Kate Thomas’ ‘postal plots’ of the nineteenth century, and what Maria Löschnigg and Rebekka Schuh have identified as an Epistolary Renaissance in the work of 21st century writers. Participants are encouraged to engage with this theme in ways including but not limited to the following questions/topics:
- how, where and why do letters feature in literary texts and literary communities?
- what strategies of narrative, plot, or character do they illustrate and deploy?
- the role of materiality in literary letters
- letters as vehicles for exploring writers’ ideas about the public and the private, absence and presence, the global and the local, and/or notions of authenticity and the ‘authentic self’
- letters and literary reputations
- letter writing manuals and the development of literary history
- what counts as a letter in twenty-first century narratives?
Letters have been described as the ‘epistolary form of gift exchange’ (Stanley), and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan cites the ‘breathlessness of urgent listening’ evoked by writers’ correspondence. We seek contributions investigating letters as makers and markers of creative communities, including but not limited to the following topics:
- the role of letters in writers’ networks
- imagined letters/letters unsent
- writers’ letters from prison
- representation or employment of letters in diasporic/migrant epistolary narratives
Creative responses to all these issues are very much welcomed.
And with a keen eye on issues of preservation and representation, we are interested to hear too from those working on the editing of writers’ letters (print and digital), and on letters in the archives.
Visit the Calls page for more details.
Banner image: detail from Reginald Marsh “Unloading the Mail”. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Full scale image available at https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.24950. No known copyright restrictions.
