Postal Plots in British Fiction, 1840-1898

By 1840, the epistolary novel was dead. Letters in Victorian fiction, however, were unmistakably alive. Postal Plots explores how Victorian postal reforms unleashed a new and sometimes unruly population into the Victorian literary marketplace where they threatened the definition and development of the Victorian literary professional.

Acknowledgements 1. Correspondence Culture 2. Mr. Micawber, Letter-Writing Manuals, and Charles Dickens's Literary Professionals 3. Feminized Correspondence, the Unknown Public, and the Egalitarian Professional of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White 4. From Postmarks to Literary Professionalism in Anthony Trollope's John Caldigate 5. Telegraphing Literature in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four Conclusion: Undelivered Bibliography Index