Love Letters and Writing Practices: On Écritures Intimes in the Nineteenth Century

Recent approaches to the history of nineteenth-century writing focus not on the contents of intimate writing but rather on letters as cultural artifacts. What is important is what their existence tells us about the act of writing as a cultural practice and about what writing meant to those who practiced it. Personal writings are highly coded forms, obeying generally accepted conventions and applying and adapting unspoken formulas. Using examples from France and Australasia, this article suggests the need to unravel the social grammar of private writings in the cultural exchanges of the nineteenth-century middle classes.