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[R]elationships are not merely maintained in personal letters; they continue to grow,
with the conventions, restraints, and opportunities presented by the letter forming a new
context for their ongoing development. 21
“The story always comes afterwards”
A correspondence is not autobiographical in the same sense as memoirs, autobiographies or
diaries. Nevertheless, “it results”, to quote Cavarero, in a story that is a narration of life. It is an
“unforeseeable” narrative because no matter agency, performativity or strategically composed
letters, there is no way to comprehend beforehand how the storyline will look like in the end. The
narrative is formed with each new letter, shaped by the time and space of the writing as well as the
letter that is being responded to.
As Hermoine Lee argues, biography (and I would add (auto)biographical writing) is not true
account of a life: “Any biographical narrative is an artificial construct, since it inevitably involves
selection and shaping.” 22 Thus, it is us who study correspondences past who detect the coherence,
and the ruptures, and construct the life story.
Keywords: Correspondence, Literacy, Gender, Biography, Narrative
Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir,
Research Fellow
Institute of History, Faculty of History and Philosophy, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland
ehh@hi.is
Notes
1
Adriana Cavarero, Relating Narratives. Storytelling and Selfhood, translated and with an
introduction by Paul A. Kottman (London: Routledge, 2000), 3.
2
Barbara Caine, Biography and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 70. See also
Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle, introduction to Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early
Modern England. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World series, eds. Michelle M. Dowd
and Julie A. Eckerle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 3.
3
Caine, Biography and History, 69.
4
As readers may notice the siblings did not have the same surname. The customary Icelandic
naming system gives children their father’s given name, adding son or daughter to it. Therefore
Sigríður is Pálsdóttir, the daughter of Páll (“dóttir” meaning daughter) and her brother Páll is the
son of Páll, and therefore becomes Pálsson.
5
Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir, “Kvennabréfin á Hallfreðarstöðum. Hagnýting skriftarkunnáttu 1817–
1829,“ Saga LI, no. 2 (2013): 57–91. In English see: Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir, “’Don’t you forget
your always loving sister.’ Writing as a social and cultural capital”, in Vernacular Literacies – Past,
Present and Future, ed. Ann‐Catrine Edlund, Lars‐Erik Edlund and Susanne Haugen. Northern
Sudies Monographs 3. Vardagligt skriftbruk 3 (Umeå University and Royal Skyttean Society, Umeå
2014), 181–192; Also Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir, “’do not let anyone see this ugly scrawling’.
Literacy Practices and the Women’s Household at Hallfreðarstaðir 1817–1829.“ [To be published
in Life Writing, No 3, 2015].
6
Liz Stanley, “The Epistolarium: On Theorizing Letters and Correspondences,” Auto/Biography 12
(2004): 208.
7
David Ellis, “Letters, Lawrence, Shakespeare and biography,” Journal of European Studies 32
(2002): 121–134. Also Stanley, “The Epistolarium,” 202, 223.
8
William Merrill Decker, Epistolary Practices. Letter Writing in America before
Telecommunications (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 9.
9
Stanley, “The Epistolarium”, 223.
10
David A Gerber, “Acts of Deceiving and Withholding in Immigrant Letters: Personal Identity and