Empire of Letters by Eve Tavor Bannet is a well-researched book that presents us with a very readable account of how letters were written and read in the long eighteenth century. It shows just how important this form of communication was for establishing and maintaining contacts at home and abroad and demonstrates the complexity of relationship between letter writer and letter receiver and between prescription and practice. It shows that letter-writing manuals had a far more important role than providing the wording and, in some cases, rules for letter layout and that the transfer of content (from kind of letter included to the actual wording) from one manual to another reflects social hierarchy, location, and authority. Bannet's book tells us much about the people who wrote and received letters, the circumstances in which they were used, and the meanings implicit in their content, form, and distribution.

The book is in three sections and culminates in a fascinating account of the ways in which secret messages were embedded within letters that assumed the conventions of the time. The first section sets the scene by considering how letters moved around, the people who wrote letters and their access to education, and the sometimes complex relationship between family letters and official letters. The chapter on “manual architectonics” summarizes manuals’ content and the complex system of conventions that were in place for wording and visual organization. The highlight of this part of the book for me was the demonstration of the relationship between “model” letters and “real” letters in transcriptions of three letters from Eliza Lucas to her father trying to persuade him not to force her to marry an older, wealthy suitor. The first two follow prescriptions in manuals; the third uses the conventional forms expected in a letter of this kind in a way that reveals the true relationship between Eliza and her father, as well as assertiveness from Eliza. In the second part of the book Bannet quotes, analyzes, and compares letters that were included in selected English, Scottish, and U.S. manuals and discusses the differences, similarities, and variance according to their different cultural registers (the phrase she uses to encompass users of manuals and the context in which they are writing). By concentrating on a selection of manuals in this way Bannet has been able to make her points clearly and convincingly. However, it is in the third section, “Secrecy and the Transatlantic Culture of Letters,” that the remarkable complexity of ways in which letters were written and read is best demonstrated. Bannet presents a number of captivating examples such as the extent to which “private” letters were actually meant to be read publicly and the ways that real message secrecy could be achieved through codes and formal intervention. She gives an example of writing an intended message onto a sheet of paper through holes cut in another sheet of paper. A letter to be read was constructed around the words on the sheet of paper, while the real message could be read only by someone who had the sheet of paper with holes cut in it. Though the theme of explicit and implicit meaning runs through the entire book, it is in this third section that it is demonstrated best.

The one disappointment I have with this book is that there are no illustrations of real letters showing how they were positioned on the page and the form of the handwriting. This is a minor criticism and may be out of the author's control and determined by publishing constraints and costs. However, A. R. Braunmuller has drawn our attention to the loss of meaning that can occur when all the forms or articulation that are at a writer's disposal—punctuation, capitalization, and so on, as well as the use of white space—are not accurately conveyed in the transcription of handwritten correspondence. As the visual attributes and material characteristics of letters are significant in their transmission and reception, we should encourage the publication of facsimile editions, and not least the reproduction of letters as appropriate in books such as Empire of Letters. The two illustrations that have been included—pages from Mercury; or, the Secret and Swift Messenger (1708)—are most welcome and show how changes in handwriting style can be used to embed a true sentiment within another message. It is tantalizing to imagine how such a technique might have been used in practice, and this can be achieved only through real artifacts or their reproduction.

Empire of Letters is accessible and clearly written and has at times a direct, even colloquial, authorial voice. It will interest historians of printing and the book as well as literary scholars. Its close analysis of the way in which letter-writing manuals borrowed from one another, based on some well-chosen examples, is an approach that could be applied elsewhere. Altogether, it is an excellent account of the complexity of interactions that could be pursued through the letter-writing medium. The emphasis on transatlantic communication provides us with a new dimension on publishing and book history that draws attention to the importance of the letter-writing manual as a powerful tool in politics, commerce, and business.