Latter-day research …

… From letters to emails: Reading Ian McEwan’s correspondence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Emails share much more with previous forms of communication than we usually imagine. Email-writing was initially modelled on letter-writing after all; business memos were another source of inspiration, as the subject line reminds us. Publishers’ archives are full of letters that mix private and professional matters. Even the speed of emails is not a radical innovation, as letters were delivered several times a day in the early twentieth century.