Letters in the Novel and the Novel in Letters
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Abstract
This chapter argues that Henry Mackenzie’s novel in letters Julia de Roubigné marks a transition from epistolary novels that are characterized by numerous correspondents who betray a desperate need for response to nineteenth-century frame tales that unite multiple speakers and eager listeners. Predicting the continued force of epistolary affect and perspective in novels published well into the nineteenth century, Julia de Roubigné indicates the role that fictional scenes of sympathetic response play in the historical transition from the novel in letters to the letter in the novel. This function of sympathy points to the persistent significance of the emotional immediacy and multiple perspectives that are characteristic of a logic of epistolarity, which in turn guides the shifting speakers and listeners of retrospective frame tales, such as René, Frankenstein, and Wuthering Heights, discussed in later chapters.