Collecting Historic Letters

A letter was written to be read by one person. That is what gives correspondence its particular quality: the writer is not addressing posterity, and consequently says things that no memoir would contain.

Beyond the famous name

The obvious way to collect letters is by signature, and it is the least rewarding. Letters from unfamiliar hands frequently carry more historical value than routine notes from celebrated ones — the soldier describing a campaign, the emigrant describing arrival, the clerk describing a firm's collapse.

Collections of this kind, assembled with judgement around a subject, an event or a place, are frequently acquired by institutions precisely because they document experience that official records omit.

Reading the physical letter

Before the mid-nineteenth century, letters were commonly written on a folded sheet, with the address written on the outer panel and the whole sealed with wax; no envelope was used. Such a letter, complete with its address panel and postal markings, is called an entire, and it is more desirable than a letter separated from its wrapper.

Postage was frequently paid by the recipient, and by the sheet, which explains the crossed letter: written to the edge of the page, then turned ninety degrees and written across, saving the cost of a second sheet. They are difficult to read and entirely legitimate.

Postal markings, franks and the seal itself are part of the object. A collector interested in postal history may value the wrapper above the letter, and the two markets sometimes compete for the same item.

What to look for

Content that says something. Read the letter before buying it, and if you cannot read the hand, ask for a transcription of the substantive passages.

The pair. Where both sides of a correspondence survive, the group is worth considerably more than the sum of its halves.

Integral address leaf, seal and postal markings, intact.

Datable context. An undated letter that can be placed by internal evidence is more useful than one that cannot.

Runs rather than singletons. Twenty letters from one hand across a decade tell a story; one does not.

Condition

Letters are vulnerable at the folds, and the fold that carried the seal is usually the first to split. Look for tears along fold lines, loss where a seal was torn open, silking or laying down from earlier repair, damp-staining, and ink corrosion.

Nineteenth-century letters written in iron-gall ink on thin paper are frequently affected by ink burn, in which the writing shows through and eventually perforates the sheet. This is progressive and cannot be reversed, only stabilised.

Reading old hands

English secretary hand, in use into the seventeenth century, is genuinely difficult and worth learning if the period interests you. Later hands are more approachable, though abbreviation and the long s trouble beginners. Several national archives publish free palaeography tutorials, and an hour a week for a few months will change what you are able to buy.

Building a group

Consider a single correspondence in depth; an event documented from several perspectives; one family across generations; a profession or trade; or a place. Keep the letters in the order in which they were kept, record what you learn, and where a group came to you intact, keep it intact.

Ethics and privacy

Correspondence involving people still living, or their immediate families, may contain material that is private in law as well as in feeling. Collecting such papers is legitimate; publishing them may not be. Where an archive contains sensitive personal information, a period of restricted access is normal practice and, in our view, right.