By 1840, the epistolary
novel was dead. Letters in Victorian fiction, however, were unmistakably alive.
By examining a variety of works from authors including Wilkie Collins,
Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, Postal Plots addresses why.
It explores how Victorian postal reforms encouraged the lower and middle
classes to read and write, allowed them some social and political agency, and
led many to literature. The writers born of postal reforms increased
stratification between Victorian novelists, already struggling to define
themselves as literary professionals. The reform-inspired readers threatened
the novelists' development by flouting distinctions between high and low
literature. Letters in Victorian novels thus become markers of the novelists'
concerns about the hierarchies and mediocrities that threatened Victorian
fiction's artistic progress and social contribution. Postal Plots explores
Victorian literary professionals' conflict between their support for liberal
ideals in the literary marketplace and their fear that they would be unable to
bring those changes to pass.
