Abstract for the CHINED IV conference, 5–7 June 2014, Helsinki, Finland.
Samuli Kaislaniemi
University of Helsinki
The Marchants Avizo, a merchants’ manual published in 1589, contains eight exemplar letters illustrating how to compose mercantile correspondence. These are matter-of-fact texts, consisting of straightforward recitals of business matters framed by epistolary formulaic expressions, structured according to inherited letter-writing practices. But between the substance of the letter and the closing formula, the first example letter contains the following passage:
Litle newes I heare worth the writing: onely I vnderstand
that there is [Here vvrite your nevves, if you haue anie.]
While the instructions within the brackets appear to contradict the preceding sentence, this is a nice example of politeness (deference) in Early Modern English letter-writing – but more importantly, it shows that the statement, “little news I hear worth the writing”, functions as a marker introducing news items in letters.
In this paper, I will look at this and other similar formulaic markers of news in Early Modern English letters. My primary material is the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, but I will also draw from intelligence and merchants’ letters dating from the early seventeenth century.