Where can I find information about the history and usage of letter-endings?

December 11, 2007 4:56 PM

Where can I find information about the history and usage of letter-endings (e.g., "love," "yours," "sincerely")?

(Is there a technical term for these?) I'm looking for more in-depth treatments than what I've found in etiquette books and letter-writing handbooks, although if anyone knows of any particularly good ones I'd like to hear about them. I'd be especially interested in academic papers or monographs on the subject, either in general or on (a) particular letter-ending(s).

posted by electric water kettle to writing & language (7 comments total)

Wikipedia has this helpful entry.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 5:15 PM on December 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I was taught that it's called the "closing."
posted by JimN2TAW at 5:18 PM on December 11, 2007

British style of 1775
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:52 PM on December 11, 2007

The Latin name for the letter-writing tradition was the ars dictaminis, which might get you some joy as a search term.

This recent essay collection might be of interest to you: Carol Poster and Lionda C. Mitchell (eds.) Letter-Writing Manuals And Instruction from Antiquity to the Present: Historical And Bibliographic Studies (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2007). [Amazon].
posted by Sonny Jim at 12:48 AM on December 12, 2007

The best article I know of on this subject is Keith Thomas, 'Yours', in Christopher Ricks and Leonard Michaels, eds., The State of the Language (1990), pp 451-6. It's full of fascinating insights (e.g. 'In Tudor and Stuart times the emphasis in subscriptions in letters tended to be on the writer's love, fidelity, constancy and obedience .. In the Romantic era, by contrast, letter-writers were more likely to stress their truthfulness and authenticity .. Out of these successive protestations of obedience, fidelity, truthfulness and sincerity there emerged the stereotyped forms which would constitute the standard usage of the mid-twentieth century'). I particularly treasure this anecdote:

Thirty years ago, when I was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, I received a note addressed to "Mr Thomas" from my then colleague, the eminent Socialist writer G.D.H. Cole. It began "Dear Thomas" and turned out to have been intended for one of the College servants with the same surname. Cole subsequently reproached me for having opened it, pointing out that if the letter had been meant for me it would have been addressed to "K.V. Thomas, Esq.", not "Mr Thomas", although it would still have begun "Dear Thomas".

Thomas's argument (sorry, I mean Sir Keith's argument) is that the conventional letter-writing formulae ('Yours sincerely', 'Yours faithfully', etc) have virtually disappeared in the last few decades, 'as part of that much larger revulsion against formality in personal relationships which has been such a feature of twentieth-century life'. He draws particular attention to the disappearance of the form 'Dear [surname]' when writing to a social equal; this he sees as an exclusively masculine form of address which could not survive 'the acceptance on equal terms of women in professional life'. In other words, changes in letter-writing formulae closely mirror changes in social attitudes and behaviour.
posted by verstegan at 8:37 AM on December 12, 2007

Verstegan: I borrowed State of the Language from the library this afternoon and read "Yours." It's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for -- thanks very much for suggesting it. Would you happen to know of any longer articles, even if not exclusively focused on "subscriptions" (in Sir Keith's word)?

Sonny Jim: That essay collection looks great, and I'm sure it will have some relevant stuff for me. Thanks.
posted by electric water kettle at 7:54 PM on December 12, 2007

Glad to be of help.

My expertise (such as it is) is mainly in the early modern period. There's been a lot of recent work on women's letter-writing, including James Daybell's new book, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (2006), which has a chapter on 'the conventions of letter-writing'. You might also find some useful material in Roger Chartier et al., Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (1997), though this is mostly focused on France.

I'm not so familiar with the scholarly literature on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but a bit of Googling turns up an essay collection on Letter Writing as a Social Practice, and another brand-new essay collection (published only two days ago, according to Amazon) on Studies in the Cultural History of Letter Writing which has gone straight onto my own 'to read' list. (I wouldn't have known about it if you hadn't asked this question, so thank you!)
posted by verstegan at 2:13 AM on December 13, 2007