The term "epistolary novel" refers to the works of fiction
that are written in the form of letters or other documents.
"Epistolary" is simply the adjectival form of the noun epistle,
from the Latinized Greek for letter. The letter as a written genre, of course,
predates the novel itself. And so as novels emerged in Europe in
the 16th and 17th centuries, it was not uncommon for authors to
include letters as part of their overall narrative.
These gave readers a chance to hear from characters in their own voices, adding
realism and psychological insight, and they
usually advance the plot as well. The first novel in English to be
composed entirely of letters is usually considered to be "Love Letters Between a
Nobleman and His Sister," published in 1684 and
attributed to the versatile playwright and author
Aphra Behn. Although Behn's characters are fictional, they were modeled on real-life
likenesses. Putting their narrative into the form of
letters increased the realism of Behn's account,
making readers feel as though they were privy to a secret and private
correspondence. But the epistolary novel really came
into its own with the immensely popular novels of Samuel Richardson
in the mid-18th century: Pamela in 1740 and the even more massive Clarissa of
1748. The full title of Pamela makes clear
both Richardson's intentions and the formal apparatus of the novel:
"Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, in a Series of
Familiar Letters from a Beautiful Young Damsel to Her
Parents." The beautiful young damsel was already a
cliche in Richardson's time. But it's the adjective "familiar" that is
important here, because it signaled to readers that what
followed would be a series of letters concerning a household
and its intimate domestic details. So Pamela's letters are familiar not
because anyone had read them before (Richardson
made them up, after all) but because they were composed in a free
informal style suitable for that of a daughter
writing her parents. Where that novel contains almost exclusively only letters
from Pamela, the novel Clarissa includes not just her
correspondence but also those of the rakish gentleman
Lovelace, who pursues her, giving readers two main perspectives
on the action of the narrative. In these novels, Richardson perfected a style he
called "writing to the moment," in which his
characters record their thoughts and actions
in what seems to be real time, thus adding further realism
immediacy and even suspense to the genre. Richardson's novels were so popular that
they created a huge vogue for the epistolary novel. As
evidence of its popularity, consider that both the first novel
written in Canada--Francis Brooke's "The History of Emily Montague," from 1769,
and the first American novel, "The Power of Sympathy,"
by William Hill Brown, from 1789, were both
epistolary in form. Now most 18th century epistolary novels feature only one or
two letter writers like richardson's. But a notable exception is a novel
published in 1776, Tobias smollett's "The Expedition of
Humphrey Clinker." In this epistolary novel, we read letters
written by a wide range of characters who are traveling around Britain
together. The main letter writer is the patriarch
of the family, a welsh gentleman named Matthew Bramble,
but we also read letters from his sister, his niece,
his nephew, and his sister's maidservant. Their viewpoints on the same locations
and activities are often radically different.
Bamble is disgusted by the waters at the spa town of Bath, for example,
whereas his niece Lydia finds them charming. And it is up to the reader to
decide where the truth lies by carefully comparing and juxtaposing their
perspectives. Ultimately this fractious family is
healed only when they leave England altogether for the more hospitable
and authentic Scottish sites that make up the latter part of their expedition.
At this point, their epistolary perspectives become more harmonized
and they head back to their Welsh estate much happier than they were when they
began their trip. From private correspondence written
between family members, then, Smollett makes the epistolary novel into
a kind of technology for bringing the whole nation together.
The epistolary novel fell out of fashion by the start of the 19th century,
but there's another famous example of one that really pushes the limits of how
the form can operate: I refer to Bram Stoker's "Dracula" of
1897. The novel is composed of a large
assortment of different documents and recordings,
including not just letters from characters, but also newspaper clippings,
diary entries, dictation cylinders, and telegraphs,
the last two representing up-to-the- minute technologies in Stoker's day.
The result is not just polyvocal and multimedia but
also effectively suspenseful, since the reader,
being privy to all of the novel's materials, frequently knows more than any
single character and can see what is happening or is
going to happen more clearly than they. Stoker, in other words, uses the
epistolary form to maximize Gothic terror and suspense.
Today, relatively few novels are written entirely in letters,
although there are notable exceptions. C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters" from 1942,
for example, and "Bridget Jones's Diary" by Helen
Fielding, from 1996, which borrows many epistolary tropes in
order to make her heroine's misadventures
come to life. More recently still, emails and texts have begun to make their way
into novels. The academic satire "Dear Committee
Members" by Julie Schumacher, for example, uses letters of recommendation, emails,
and other forms of modern communication to paint a very funny picture
of a very dysfunctional English Department(one that bears no resemblance
whatsoever to our fine institution here at Oregon State University,
I should note!) And Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer-Prize-winning "A Visit from the
Goon Squad" includes a chapter entirely written in
PowerPoint slides. Finally, it's worth noting that versions
of the epistolary form have found their way into film as well.
I'm thinking here of when a movie is presented in terms of "found footage"
so that it is made up of what appears to be footage shot by the characters
themselves-- "The Blair Witch Project" is probably the
best known recent example of this-- or by cameras that exists within the
frame of the movie itself, say, home videos in the "Paranormal
Activity" franchise. And many movies will make use of these
tactics temporarily even when the entire movie is not shot that way.
A quick shot made to look like it was recorded by a security camera, for
example, is often used to add realism immediacy
and suspense to our viewing experience. And just think of all the times the
characters are shown texting or writing emails in real time,
all of which owes a debt--whether conscious or not--to Richardson's
technique of "writing to the moment."