The History of Epistolary

Among the first epistle to be written were the letters of Paul to the New Testament churches. Women established themselves in the genre as men realized that the form was more suitable to the female writer's style. However, due to the modest qualities of the women, little was ever published (Goldsmith vii). In the eighteenth-century, epistolary peaked in Europe. Among the popular epistolary novels of this time were Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereueses(1782), Richardson's Pamela(1740) and Clarissa(1747), and Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise(1761)(Norwich 148). Later in the same century, Forcey says "the epistolary novel could not survive as a dominant form because, in the fast changing polygot world of . . . Anglo-America, it fell victim to the same forces of seduction and betrayal that its heroines were unable to avoid"(225). In the 1970s, fictional letters reentered the literary arena. Creative writers spawned this interest with Michel Butor's Illustrations III(1972) and Bod Randall's The ...