«Me alegraré que al recibo de ésta...». Four hundred years of letter-writing (XVIth-XIXth centuries)

Even though the letter has a long history behind it, its use as a medium of communication undoubtedly intensified from the 16th century onwards, as a result of the convergence of at least the following factors: the spread of literacy, the increasing importance of writing in every sphere of life, circumstances which encouraged epistolary exchanges (especially war, emigration to America and imprisonment) and the development of postal systems. Similarly, from the end of the 1700s onwards and especially throughout the 19th century a new epistolary order emerged as a consequence of a series of transformations both in the way letters were written and also in the material on which they were written and in postal practices. Based on these hypotheses, this essay sketches a broad outline of the issues involved, limiting the discussion to the most significant aspects of epistolary communication over the last 400 years.