The relationship between real and fictional letters in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been the source of much critical debate. Disagreement surrounds the extent to which the increasingly popular genre of the epistolary novel drew on the practices and techniques of actual correspondence. On the one hand are those who see epistolary fiction as developing out of real‐life letters, with some literary‐stylistic additions. On the other hand are those who reject this teleological approach in favour of one that emphasizes the functional versatility of the letter in the period, and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of drawing a distinction between its real and fictional incarnations. This relationship between real correspondence and epistolary fiction is brought into sharp focus by the genre of the letter‐writing manual, which rose sharply in popularity from the last two decades of the seventeenth century onwards. Concentrating on John Hill's The Young Secretary's Guide (1689), Thomas Goodman's The Experience's Secretary (1699), and G. F.'s The Secretary's Guide (1705), in particular, in this article, I suggest that the style of the letter‐writing manual from this period can, with caution, be compared with that of the epistolary novel. I pay particular attention to the ways in which letters in these manuals respond to and quote from each other and the often subtle ways in which they thus incorporate different voices. This polyvocality is taken further in Samuel Richardson's manual Familiar Letters (1741), which, as is well known, provided the raw material for his first novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1741). I demonstrate that some of the stylistic techniques which would prove crucial to the great epistolary novels of the later eighteenth century, including Richardson's, can be found, at least in embryonic form, in the letter‐writing manuals of the Restoration period.

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书信写作手册和书信体小说

十七世纪末十八世纪初真实信件和虚构信件之间的关系一直是许多批评性争论的根源。关于日益流行的书信体小说在多大程度上借鉴了实际通信的实践和技巧，存在着分歧。一方面，有些人认为书信体小说是从现实生活中的书信发展而来，并添加了一些文学风格。另一方面，有些人拒绝这种目的论方法，而倾向于强调该时期信件的多功能性，以及区分其真实和虚构的化身的难度（如果不是不可能的话）。真实信件和书信体小说之间的这种关系因书信写作手册的体裁而成为人们关注的焦点，这种体裁从十七世纪最后二十年开始急剧流行。专注于约翰·希尔年轻秘书指南(1689)，托马斯·古德曼体验秘书(1699) 和 GF 的秘书指南（1705），特别是在这篇文章中，我建议谨慎地将这一时期的书信写作手册的风格与书信体小说的风格进行比较。我特别关注这些手册中的字母相互回应和引用的方式，以及它们因此融合不同声音的微妙方式。塞缪尔·理查森 (Samuel Richardson) 的手册进一步阐述了这种多声性熟悉的信件（1741），众所周知，这为他的第一部小说提供了原材料帕梅拉；或美德得到回报（1741）。我证明，一些对十八世纪后期伟大的书信体小说（包括理查森的小说）至关重要的文体技巧，可以在复辟时期的书信写作手册中找到，至少是雏形。