The Letters

The discussion of the letters involves the history of the appearance of the bulk of these letters at auction in 1992, the earlier preservation of the correspondence by Macaulay’s female descendants, and the contents of other family materials not included in this edition. This section points to evidence for an earlier attempt to edit the correspondence and outlines reasons for believing that there must have existed other letters, preserved by Macaulay’s descendants, which are missing from the correspondence as it has currently come down to us. Although Macaulay wrote during a period in which some of her acquaintances excelled in the art of familiar letter writing, her own letters reveal little of her domestic or inner life.