By the eighteenth century, personal networks bound together the widening British world. In The Opened Letter, Lindsay O'Neill argues that the British became an early networking society, relying on letters to maintaining necessary social networks that British global expansion and mobility threatened to disconnect.
The 100 letters collected in this beautifully illustrated book demonstrate the power of the written word to inspire, astonish and entertain. Ranging from ink-inscribed tablets vividly describing life in the Roman Empire to remarkable last wills and testaments, passionate outpourings of love and despair, and succinct notes with deadly consequences.
