BODHI: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL

Vol. 2, No. 1, Serial No. 2, 2008

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Published by

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND MASS

COMMUNICATION

KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY, DHULIKHEL, KAVRE, NEPAL

http://www.ku.edu.np/media

media@ku.edu.np
176 Acharya, Commodification of Personal Letters
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Commodification of Personal Letters: The
Cultural Politics of Print Industry in Nineteenth
Century England
-- Khagendra Acharya

Personal letters, which are written by an individual to specific

person(s), are normally not mass communication products.
Unless the writer intends to disseminate the letter to a large
number through specific person, the domain of letter is what
Jürgen Habermas (1981) has called “the immediate milieu of
the individual social actor” and thus is not “public sphere” (p.
44). Nonetheless, many personal letters written especially by
Romantic writers like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, John Keats, Jane Austen, exist in many anthologies
since nineteenth century, and thus are easily accessible to any
interested readers. The cause for this, according to Nichola
Deane, is the writers’ “aware [ness] of the commercial value of
their letters” (2005, p. 579). Another explanation, though in a
different context but on the same matter i.e. analysis of a FM
radio program Mero Katha, Mero Geet1, by Laura Kunreuther
postulates, “[it is] a form of urban sociality that is rooted in the
public expression and circulation of personal narrative and
intimate affairs” (2004, p. 58). Both the explanations, despite
their strength to certain extent, do not address the dialectics of
authorship and print industry appropriately. Deane’s
explanation is post hoc as it locates the cause on the false origin
rather than on the real agent of publication. Similarly,
Kunreuther’s statement tries to enliven an oldfangled Freudian
notion of ‘the talking cure’ to analyze historical reality instead
of analyzing the dialectics of material factors. Disagreeing both
the views and using social change theory2, this paper argues
that the commodification of personal letters in the nineteenth
century is the consequence of cultural politics of print industry.

1
Mero Katha, Mero Geet is a FM program. Kalyan Gautam, a RJ
reads out ‘true life stories’ sent to him by one of his many listeners.
2
Social change theory studies the causes, results, dynamics, and the
speed of any change in societies.
© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np
Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1) 177
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The application of social change theory demands for historical
consciousness about the subject of study. Hence, the paper,
before concentrating on the major issue: the cultural politics of
print industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, sketches
briefly the history of personal letters.

The genesis of personal letters is traceable at least to the time of

writing culture if not to the beginning of human civilization.
Looking back, we find many distinguished persons in the
history like Isocrates in the fourth century BC, Quintilian in
first century BC resorting to it on different occasions.
Nonetheless, these instances are sporadic and the major marker
of widespread use i.e. letter manuals exist only from around
1000 AD. According to Austin, (2007), “The earliest formulator
of rules for letter writing as far as we know was Alberic of
Monte Cassino c. 1075. His treatise was of course in Latin. The
British Library has a formulary (the original name for a letter-
writing manual) which is tentatively dated c. 1207 and was
made for the Bishop of Salisbury” (p. 15).

Austin’s study demonstrates how scanty importance was given

to letters till the date. And it appears that letters could hardly
draw worthy attention despite the existence of manuals till the
end of fifteenth century. Changes are visible only then. “As
early as the 16th century,” Goldsmith (1989) says, “scholars
made personal letter writing an object of formal study,
recognizing the epistolary as an authentic literary genre” (p.
48). Erasmus wrote a treatise on letter writing for his English
pupils in Paris: Libellus de conscribendisepistolis. This was
first printed in England in 1521. Following his models, many
other writers produced the manuals in this century. Of them
Charles Hoole’s A Century of Epistles English and Latin,
William Fulwood’s The Enemies of Idleness and Angel Day’s
English Secretorie were the best-known manuals. The
publication of Nicholas Breton’s volume of model letters, A
Poste with a Packet of Madde Letters, in 1602 marks a drastic
transformation. “From the later half of the 17th century,” Briggs
& Burke say, “treaties on the art of letter writing published in

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178 Acharya, Commodification of Personal Letters
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large numbers” (2005, p. 37). The popularity of letter manuals
can easily be estimated when we consider the involvement of
many great writers. In 1725 Daniel Defoe’s “The Complete
English Tradesman”, and in 1741 Samuel Richardson’s
“Letters Written to and for Particular Friends on the Most
Important Occasions” joined what had become an exceedingly
popular genre of how-to manuals.

Along with the development of letter manuals, another

development is noticeable i.e. the development of epistolary
novels. James Howell (1594-1666), who is often credited for
fashioning novels in epistolary form, has incorporated letters
written about prison, foreign adventure and the love of women
in “Familiar Letters”. Later in 1684, Aphra Behn explored the
potentiality of epistolary form in the novel Love-Letters
Between a Nobleman and His Sister. Originally published in
three volumes, the novel uses three letters, Love-Letters
Between a Noble-Man and his Sister, Love Letters From a
Noble Man to his Sister, and The Amours of Philander and
Silvia, to shape the entire structure of the novel. The epistolary
novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century with the
works of authors like Samuel Richardson. Richardson, who was
urged on by what he perceived as a moral crisis in English
society particularly among the newly well-off middle classes,
pressed letter-writing instruction into the service of moral
recovery. His novels– Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles
Grandison– are in epistolary form. Later in the 18th century,
the epistolary novel slowly fell out of use. Yet, we can find its
use in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice and Lady
Susan.

The story so far sketches a cursory understanding about the

history of letters and the use of this model of communication in
fiction. Moreover, it answers why fictionalized letters became
an easy to use material in the novels. To get answer to the
question– why real personal letters appeared in the anthologies
only in the nineteenth century– demands an in-depth analysis of
the politics of print industry in England.

© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np

Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1) 179
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Printing till the first half of fifteenth century in England was
only the job of scribes. They would spend months to prepare a
single manuscript copy of any text. When England brought
home the invention of Gutenberg almost twenty-six years after
its invention in 1450, the changes turned out to be
revolutionary. “A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of
Constantinople,” Clapham (1957) has said, “could look back
from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million
books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of
Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in A.
D. 330” (p. 37). Yet, print did not replace manuscript printing
completely. In a sense, print was not accepted unanimously
despite its miraculous achievements. For instance, Vespasiano
de Bisticci, who was the most celebrated Florentine book
merchant, in his memoir Lives of Illustrious Men refers to the
beautifully bound manuscript book in the Duke of Urbino’s
library that, “snobbishly implies that a printed book would have
been ‘ashamed’ in such elegant company” (Eisenstein, 2002, p.
153). Manuscript, a means of social bonding between the
individuals involved, could hardly be displaced by print due to
the reservation of many people.
In the sixteenth and seventh centuries, men of high
status (and women even more so) were often unhappy
with the idea of publishing books, on the grounds that
the books would be sold to the general public and so
make the authors look like trades people. As a result of
this prejudice, coterie poets and other writers preferred
to circulate their work in manuscript copies to their
friends and acquaintances. It was in this form that the
poems of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), for example, the
sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, circulated in
Elizabethan England. Again, the love lyrics of John
Donne, written in 1590s, were not published until 1663,
two years after the author’s death. (Briggs & Burke,
2005, p.37)

The very common use of print in fifteenth and sixteenth century

England was reproducing Bible in different languages,

© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np

180 Acharya, Commodification of Personal Letters
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prescribing rules of writing letters, producing multiple copies of
pamphlets and newsletters, and disseminating news about
happenings. In the seventeenth century, print was basically
confined to political causes. It was only in the eighteenth
century i.e. during Enlightenment, England could explore high
potential of print.

Print industry, which was backed up strongly by

Enlightenment’s unequivocal emphasis on reason, strengthened
the cause of Enlightenment itself. The mutual bond resulted in
the production of numerous books and consequently
commercialization. Both the publishers and authors were
benefited by the industry. John Brewer’s study, which accesses
the success of a publisher cum a writer, is worthy to quote at
length:
In his early years, when he had little capital or clout,
Richardson was often hired by a bookseller to print part
of a work. He was a craftsman for hire, a cog in the
publishing machine. … Richardson’s career as a printer
followed the path laid down in his first published work,
the advice book The Appretince’s Vade Mecum: or,
Young Man’s Pocket Companion. … The success of his
epistolary fiction transformed Richardson from a
prosperous printer into a literary lion. He was inundated
with fan mail, flooded with suggestions for his plot, and
deluged with praise and criticism. (2002, p. 241-2)

Publishing industry was a boon to him. The industry which in

Richardson’s birth was “a collection of trades, dominated by a
powerful guild and confined to a few streets and lanes in the
city of London” gave him not only literary success but also
economic one. When he died in 1761 he left “a comfortable
fortune of ₤ 14,000” (op. cit., p. 243). The industry, as already
said, was beneficial to authors also. So substantial was the
payments from their publishers that some authors ‘begin to
think of abandoning patrons and living from the proceeds of
their writing’.

© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np

Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1) 181
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Dr. Johnson, … whose hatred of patronage was
notorious, received ₤ 1, 575 in advance for his
Dictionary from a group of five booksellers, including
Thomas Longman and Andrew Miller. Miller gave the
philosopher-historian David Hume an advance of ₤
1,400 for the third volume of his History of Britain, and
William Robertson an advance of ₤ 3,400 for his
History of Charles V. The poet Alexander Pope had
received a still higher sum ₤ 5,300, for his translation of
Homer’s Iliad. (Briggs & Burke, 2005, p. 49)

Despite the rosy picture, an internal crisis was also going on in

the industry. As the industry could hardly avoid the possible
loopholes within its mechanism, unethical practices were also
taking place. Consequently, it was almost impossible to curb
piracy that had its firm ground already, “London booksellers,
like those of Venice and Amsterdam before them, were already
notorious by the late seventeenth century for the theft of their
rivals’ literary property” (ibid, p. 49). To solve the problem,
many measures were taken. One of them was the formation of
alliances among printers to share their expenses and profits, an
agreement that sounds similar to that of modern joint-stock
companies. The system of partnership was helpful not only to
curb piracy to a great extent but also to publish even very
expensive books. Another measure taken to curb the problem
was enactment of intellectual property law. Britain passed an
Act in 1709 to guarantee “authors or their assignees the sole
right to print their work for fourteen years” (op. cit., p. 46).

The next problem brought by the reality of print industry was

sycophantism. In a sense, legitimacy of the idea of professional
authorship was of no use for the publication of books. “The
author’s first task,” Brewer (2002) has said, “was to seek entry
into the labyrinth of publishing. Without the resources of a
Horace Walpole and despite the opportunities afforded by the
periodical press, the writer almost certainly needed to procure
the services of a bookseller” (p. 246). And astonishingly, the
treatment of booksellers to authors was hardly of expectation

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182 Acharya, Commodification of Personal Letters
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level: “Whether the writer approached a bookseller in person or
solicited support through importunate correspondence, the
author’s reception was rarely warm, occasionally tepid and
often cold” (ibid, p. 246). The last resort of authors was to “join
one of the many informal coteries and circles which made up
literary London” (op. cit., p. 247). In a sense, it was only the
publishers and certain patrons who wagged the whole tradition
of ‘print culture’.

It was for the same reason any anthology of personal letters was
not published. Letters written by Romantic writers like William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Jane
Austen appeared only when they were instrumental for any
fitting cause. As publishers could locate no benefit in them,
they “publish[ed] and trade[d] in the copyrights of established
figures” rather than the letters by these writers. To understand
how economically oriented the mind of publishers was, we can
refer to the system of what economists now call ‘advance
payment’. The publishers would prefer the publish books that
would come with the list of subscribers.
The object of subscription was to secure down
payments on and promises to purchase a book before its
publication. This ensured that production and
distribution costs were covered before a work went to
press, an arrangement that pleased the booksellers
because it cut risks and could promise large profits.
(Brewer, 2002, p. 249)

The understanding of print industry from fifteenth to eighteenth

century gives an understanding that the publishers were the
pivots of print industry. They would decide on the basis of “the
principle of legitimacy which its advocates call ‘popular’, i.e.
the consecration bestowed by the choice of ordinary consumers,
the mass audience” (Bourdieu, 2002, p. 83). As very limited
letters fulfilled the required criteria, very few of them got
published.

© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np

Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1) 183
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The publication of any volume of personal letters that served
not only the interest of the publisher but also of many others
appeared almost a century later. Lord Brabourne Edward
printed the anthology of Jane Austen personal letters in 1884
which is the first book of this type. The book comprises of the
letters written by Jane Austen to a young authoress Anna
Austen, her sister Cassandra Austen, her cousin Fanny Knight,
and Mr. Clarke along with the introduction and critical remarks
of its editor Lord Brabourne Edward. All these letters are of
strictly interpersonal nature- the content of any of these letters
do not seem to be aimed for any other than the addressee of the
letter.

Brabourne’s venture, which is very often described as

‘encroachment to Jane Austen’s private sphere’, cannot simply
be viewed as the consequence of the publisher’s profit motive
only. To view thus is to ‘reduce a complex interplay of many
components into monolithic vulgar Marxist perspective’.
Similarly, to view the production of the text as author’s desire
for popularity is anachronistic. For a proper understanding of
the cause, it is essential to study cultural politics of print
industry in relation to Austien’s works.

One of the components of cultural politics that needs study is

the intellectual property right Act of 1807. The Act, which was
a curb against piracy that was rampant during the time, had
provision for ‘authors or their assignees the sole right to print
their work for fourteen years’. As the law had that provision for
only fourteen years, publishers could print any work without
informing the author. It was only in 1887, Berne Convention
passed international copyright. Hence, the publisher (Longman
and Rees) had no obligation to author as they were under the
law of 1709. The second component of cultural politics i.e.
renaissance of Austen’s popularity after the 70s of nineteenth
century also needs an analysis.

Jane Austen’s writings, especially novels, were hugely popular

during the first three decades of nineteenth century. Many

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184 Acharya, Commodification of Personal Letters
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admiring readers, who considered themselves part of a literary
elite, viewed Austen’s works as a mark of their cultural taste.
Great novelists like Sir Walter Scott and critics like Richard
Whatley also praised her writing. Such favorable climate for
Austen’s novels however reached to almost decadence in the
thirties. Although her novels were republished in Britain in the
1830s, they were not bestsellers. As they failed to conform to
Romantic and Victorian expectations, “powerful emotion [be]
authenticated by an egregious display of sound and color in the
writing,” nineteenth-century critics and audiences generally
preferred the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. But
in the 70s, Austen’s writings started getting appreciation of
many critics. With the publication of J. E. Austen-Leigh’s A
Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870, Austen was introduced to a
wider public as “dear aunt Jane”, the respectable maiden aunt.
Author and critic Leslie Stephen described the popular mania
that developed for Austen in the 1880s as “Austenolatry”. What
followed in this decade were the reissues of Austen’s novels–
Routledge released the first popular editions in 1883 in a
sixpenny series. Lord Brabourne Edward’s collection of Jane
Austen’s Letters is also one of many in the milieu of rapid
production.

The third component of cultural politics i.e. the old age system
of patronage also played a role in the publication of the book.
Here, the dedication of Edward accomplishes the job of
patronage. The dedication accomplishes two functions
simultaneously. First it reveals the nearness of the writer to the
queen and second it guarantees that the publisher would not
suffer loss at least. Hence, Brabourne’s ‘encroachment to Jane
Austen’s private sphere’ cannot simply be viewed as ‘a job to
satisfy the queen’. The following is Edward’s dedication.
TO
THE QUEEN’S MOST EXCELLENT
MADAM

It was the knowledge that your Majesty so highly

appreciated the works of Jane Austen which
© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np
Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1) 185
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emboldened me to ask permission to dedicate to your
Majesty these volumes, containing as they do numerous
letters of that authoress, of which, as her grand-nephew,
I have recently become possessed. These letters are
printed, with the exception of a very few omissions
which appeared obviously desirable, just as they were
written, and if there should be found in them, or in the
chapters which accompany them, anything which may
interest or amuse your Majesty, I shall esteem myself
doubly fortunate in having been the means of bringing
them under your Majesty's notice.

I am, Madam,
Your Majesty's very humble
and obedient subject,

BRABOURNE

The publication of the book thus coincides with both significant

literary developments and consists of some important factors.
The encounter of the royal interest, the importance of the
blessings to the authors, a defunct copyright Act, and an
emerging commercial public in nineteenth-century England
shaped the dialectics of cultural politics of print industry. The
desire of authors/publishers to associate themselves with royal
blessing initiated the politics and also valorized the royal
family’s endeavor. Ultimately, it involved the publishers. The
interest of publishers, which was generally economically
oriented, played a determining role in the selection/ rejection of
any work. Hence, to account publisher’s interest as the only
cause of publication is to reduce complex interplay of many
components and consequently deny their role. To be specific on
Austen’s case, Routledge is one of many reasons for the
publication of her letters. The role of other factors like the
interest of the Queen on Austen’s letters, defunct copyright act,
and the desire of Edward to get patronage of the queen is also
© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np
186 Acharya, Commodification of Personal Letters
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noteworthy. Finally, when the logic– printing industry was
enmeshed into cultural politics during nineteenth century– is
combined with an apparent reality i.e. to produce any work
without appropriate consent is a shameful commodification, we
can draw the nexus between the former and the latter. The
anthology of Austen’s letters, which bears out the cultural
politics of print industry in nineteenth century England,
demonstrates why the personal letters written by romantic age
writers in general and Jane Austen in particular became
commodities.

References

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Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1) 187
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© 2008 Kathmandu University, Nepal. http://www.ku.edu.np