Introduction

This introduction outlines the centrality of the body as a theme in eighteenth-century letters, letters which helped transform the world. It assesses the various methodological, disciplinary and thematic approaches taken by existing scholarship when considering the multi-faceted relationships between these letters and the bodies they were written about, highlighting the particular emphasis on corporeality, health and illness, alongside distance, otherness, absence and feeling. It then expands upon the three main themes by which this volume is divided: ‘Imagined bodies and imagining touch’, ‘Material bodies/material letters’ and ‘Bodies deployed’. As the introduction shows, Letters and the Body extends upon and deepens a scholarship that has steadily recognised the importance of the body in letter-writing through these themes, the volume’s interdisciplinary approach, and through encompassing letters from the very poor to the elite in society, and with a global reach.