Decline of letter writing may have broader impact

According to Peter Geoghegan's blog post on The Guardian, the decline of letter writing, in favor of e-mailing, posting on Twitter, etc., may affect more than just personal correspondence. The future of literary history, as we've come to know it, may also be changed dramatically, according to "Epistles at dawn: the dying art of letter writing."

"Loquacious letters and epistolary exchanges between authors are falling by the wayside in the digital age – and readers and literary estates are all the poorer for it," says the opening to the article.

"The digital age may have sounded a surprisingly quiet death knell for edited collections of literary letters. With so much material digitalised (and often wiped), writers will no longer leave behind stacks of corrugated boxes stuffed with missives, ripe for investigation and possible publication. Heirs to literary estates will be saved the hassle of having to burn potentially compromising material – as Stephen Joyce once did to a significant portion of his grandfather's letters. They can now simply delete anything, or everything, with the push of a button; and readers – not to mention literary biographers – will be denied the humanity, humour and, of course, occasional nuggets of gold that the best-collected letters contain," Geoghegan writes.

It's an interesting blog post. I hope you'll read it.