Newcastle University

Letters as historical evidence

It is useful to bear in mind that a body of letters in an archive is unlikely ever to be complete: letters may have been accidentally lost or destroyed; sometimes they will have been deliberately removed by family members to avoid scandal or the release of sensitive information into the public domain. Furthermore, the correspondence is likely to be one-sided: in-coming correspondence will dominate since people are more likely to keep letters which they have received than to make copies of, or ask to have returned, letters which they have written themselves. Letters may be scattered throughout an archive, or, correspondence might form a 'series' within an archive. Letters might also be serendipitously found tipped and pasted into books.

Letters can provide a largely unmediated glimpse of the past: they allow us to become privy to a person's (often candid) personal thoughts as they were committed to paper and this can give historians and biographers a very different view of a person than is suggested by their public work or utterances. For example, a letter to Miss Owen provides comment on the health of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist (September 16th 1831): he thanks God that he is able to respond to Miss Owen's enquiries by telling her that both he and his wife are “pretty well” but goes on to explain that, due to a weakness of his eyes, he will be sparing with his pen. He nevertheless fills two and a half sheets of paper and is quite effusive in signing off with friendly respects and remembrances. (Mary Frances Owen had become Mrs William Wilberforce in 1820 so “Miss O.” could be one of his wife's relatives.) In contrast, in a letter sent from Cambridge, July 25th 1926 to an unidentified recipient, the poet A.E. Housman wrote: “I do not feel able to refuse your request, and I have copied and signed two poems. If I do not say that I hope this will do the good you expect, it is because I have one thing in common with Keats and am incapable of hope”. Houseman was in a similarly pessimistic vein when, on January 7th 1927, he wrote to a Mr. Wilson: “As to your enquiry about my lectures, some of them have been published, and they are all very dry”.

Letters can also provide an individual perspective on events. Having regretfully declined an invitation, Viscount James Bryce wrote to Constance Flower of the Irish situation. His comments contradict newspaper coverage, teaching the researcher to question the impetus behind the writing of both printed and manuscript sources and showing the folly of relying upon public accounts or limited sources. “The condition of Ireland, serious as it is, is not so bad as the English papers make it out: and there seems to be a …[?] agreement as to what the Land bill ought to be.” The letter is undated but the first Irish Land Act was passed in 1870.

Furthermore, a manuscript item is unique, thus providing greater scope for original research. A letter is more than words on a page: there are inferences to be made from the quality of the paper it is written on (weight, embossing, edging, &c.); the handwriting style (an exercise in ciphering or a hurried scrawl); whether or not the letter has been enclosed within an envelope or simply folded and sealed with wax; how much of the page has been filled (white space, writing on the page in two directions); and whether or not it is in draft form.

Effective interrogation of a letter follows the usual rules of asking Who? What? Where? When? And Why? An historian will try to identify the sender and recipient and to place them in some sort of social context before deciding what form the letter takes. Addresses can help with issues of chronology or relevant events may have occurred in that same place. Additional tools might be required in order to understand weights and measures, trades and place names or dialects. Inevitably, it will take a researcher time to acquire palaeography skills or to familiarise themselves with the quirks of a particular person's hand.