The Letters of the Eighteenth Century

    What do the letters of Humphry Clinker represent as letters of the Eighteenth Century?  As a modern reader, what do we need to understand about what letter writing entailed?  To an audience in the year 2006, letter writing is more than obsolete, for we can barely understand why so many minute details would be told and written in letter.  Today, letters are rarely, if ever, written, and we communicate the activities of our daily lives through other methods.  According to Winifred Homer, in her article entitled "The Roots of Modern Writing Instruction:  Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain," "writing instruction within an society is subject to social and political influences, and nowhere is this more true than in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain."  Though the majority of letters found in Humphry Clinker are from the less than educated, it is clear that Jerry Melford has had formal instruction in writing and other academic subjects.  Regardless, Homer's concept of weighted letters carries far beyond simply the formal writing.  All of the characters in Humphry Clinker actually have a self-purpose; they effectually carry out their desires through their letters to others.