Introduction. The early modern letter opener / James Daybell and Andrew Gordon
part 1. Material practices. From Palatino to Cresci: Italian writing books and the Italic scripts of early modern English letters / Jonathan Gibson
Conveying correspondence: early modern letter bearers, carriers, and posts / Mark Brayshay
part 2. Technologies and designs. Enigmatic cultures of cryptology / Nadine Akkerman
Material fictions: counterfeit correspondence and the culture of copying in early modern England / Andrew Gordon
Allegory and epistolarity: cipher and faction in Sidney and Spenser / Andrew Zurcher
part 3. Genres and rhetorics. Mixed messages and Cicero effects in the Herrick Family letters of the sixteenth century / Lynne Magnusson
John Stubb's left-handed letters / Christopher Burlinson
"An uncivill scurrilous letter": "Womanish Brabb[l]es" and the letter of affront / Michelle O'Callaghan
part 4. The afterlives of letters. "Burn this letter": preservation and destruction in the early modern archive / Arnold Hunt
Gendered archival practices and the future lives of letters / James Daybell
Familiar letters and state papers: the afterlives of early modern correspondence / Alan Stewart
Notes.