Dr Zurcher gives the Plenary Lecture at the Epistolary Cultures – Letters and Letter-writing in Early Modern Europe conference, University of York, Friday 18 March.

Bringing together speakers from around the globe who are working on early modern letter writing and its networks, this conference explores the many aspects of early modern epistolary culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth century in its Latin and vernacular forms. It considers topics such as the intellectual geographies of letter-writing, the connections between vernacular and Latin letter cultures, questions of genre, rhetoric and style, as well as the political, religious, and scientific uses of letters. The conference includes a workshop, which involves hands-on reconstruction of early modern letter writing devices for ‘letter-locking’ using paper, wax and seals, led by a team from MIT and Oxford.