The Death of the Letter? Epistolary Intent, Letterness and the Many Ends of Letter-Writing

Is the letter now ‘dead’, in terminal decline because of the impact of new digital technologies? Such arguments raise important points. However, they fail to distinguish between prevailing genre conventions for letter-writing in different time periods and the underlying ‘epistolary intent’ and ‘letterness’ involved, and so overstate the newness of the changes discussed. Examples of over-time departures from ‘the letter’ but which display clear epistolary intent and deploy inventive forms of letterness are discussed, including the letters of Olive Schreiner, St Paul’s epistles, communications between Roman legionaries, Second World War love letters, an exchange involving mathematicians, and student emails.