Ancient letter-writing and Latin letters in particular have been the object of renewed scholarly interest in the past twenty years, and the team of Latinists led by G. and L. has contributed vigorously to this field of study. The dynamic duo mentioned above is the driving force behind a series of biennial colloquia on epistolography that have taken place at the University François-Rabelais in Tours since 1998, and the volume reviewed here gathers the majority of the contributions presented at the 2010 conference. G. and L. have decided to redefine the topic of the 2010 colloquium devoted to ‘ancient letter writing and its European extensions’ by choosing the equally broad but more thematically focussed topic of the presence of history in epistolography.

Breadth (of scope, approach and audience) is one the main concerns of the editors, and the foreword emphasises G.'s and L.'s intent to open up the investigation to different time periods (from antiquity to the twentieth century), languages (Greek and French in addition to Latin letters) and, ultimately, fields other than Classics. This breaking of chronological, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries is balanced by the choice of history as a unifying theme for the sake of the volume's coherence. The introduction, however, makes clear that the editors are aware of the ‘ambiguity of the term history’ (p. 13) and keen on exploiting that ambiguity to broaden the scope of their inquiry. ‘L'histoire’ mentioned in the title is understood as both the narrative of historical events (historia rerum gestarum) and the events themselves (res gestae). The editors seem similarly inclined to exploit the full range of meanings of the word ‘épistolaire’ and, in fact, the collected papers are concerned not only with epistles (single or collected), but also with epistolography and related questions of genre. Unfortunately, however, the important implications of that distinction are neither addressed nor explored in the otherwise compelling introduction.

The volume is elegantly organised. The papers are divided among five sections of approximately the same length, which are preceded by the introduction and followed by the bibliography. The first and the third sections address similar questions, but whereas the first section focusses on the presence of history ‘in its various forms’ in letter-writing, the third section explores the presence of the past in epistolography with special attention to historical exempla. There are intriguing overlaps between these two sections – e.g. the function of historical ‘exempla’ in Ovid's Tristia and the difference between mythological and historical ‘exempla’ are the object of a fine analysis by D. Roussel in the first section (pp. 25–31) – but the stricter focus of the third section is reflected in the chronological range of the essays, which is limited to ancient letters, both Greek and Latin. The second section is devoted to the question of genre and investigates the relationship between historiography and epistolography. This section is, in the opinion of this reviewer, the most thought-provoking of the five, not necessarily for the quality of the papers presented – there are excellent contributions throughout the volume – but because of the theme selected. By focussing on the question of genre, the editors and their contributors invite reflection upon broader issues of genre, which require a less ‘fragmentary’ approach to the study of letter-writing. The fourth and fifth sections shift their attention from letter-writing to the letter-writer. The fourth section focusses on the role of the letter-writer as ‘witness of his time’, whereas the fifth section explores the relationship between ‘grande histoire’ and the personal history of various letter-writers as it transpires from their correspondences.

Given the number of contributions (27) and the word limit of this review, it would be impossible to offer a fair summary and assessment of each paper. Luckily, the editors of the volume have made this endeavour (almost) redundant by offering marvellously concise summaries of the essays in their introduction. These brief assessments not only emphasise the connections between the papers, but also point out the contribution of each essay in a clearer and more compelling way than some of the essays themselves.

The breadth and ambition of the volume are praiseworthy especially because of the editors' attempt to break boundaries and promote dialogue among scholars across different disciplines and fields of study. Even though the great majority of the contributions are devoted to ancient letter collections in Latin, and a few authors such as Sidonius Apollinaris and Ovid are the object of study in several essays, the range of the contributions is impressive and encompasses letters from Greco-Roman Antiquity (Alciphron, Augustus, Cicero, Fronto, Horace, Pliny, Ovid, Seneca), Late Antiquity (the Historia Augusta, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Julian, Paulinus of Nola, Sidonius Apollinaris), the Middle Ages (Dante), Byzantium (Maximus Planudes), the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Garnier, Justus Lipsius) and the twentieth century (Paul Claudel). These qualities, however, emphasise an obvious shortcoming of the volume. The wide variety and chronological range of the authors studied does little to promote any dialogue (interdisciplinary or otherwise) among contributors, and apart from the editors' effort in the introduction to draw connections between the essays, the contributors ignore each other's contributions. Moreover, even though it is refreshing to see some of the traditional dichotomies ignored (such as, e.g., fictional vs real, verse vs prose letters) and different epistolary ‘genres’ included in the volume, the lack of a deeper engagement with common theoretical issues diminishes the impact and value of the attempted breaking of boundaries. These criticisms, however, should not detract from the overall contribution that this well-produced volume has to offer to the ever-growing field of epistolography.