Abstract:This article explores a new subtype of vernacular correspondence emerging in the early eighteenth century, the pauper letter, providing a textual classification of this new text type and an account of its variability and evolution into the nineteenth century. The study is based on 189 letters sent between 1730 and 1834 by the poor applying for support from their parish of legal settlement, with a focus on the potential influence of the form and language of petitions in the realisation of five features which ca… Show more
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