About letterbooks and the EE Letterbook
Before the photocopier and the personal computer, letterbooks were the normal method of keeping a record of correspondence, copied laboriously by hand. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, letterbooks can provide the only surviving record of letters long since lost or destroyed.
Letters in EE come from the letterbooks of the earl of Shaftesbury, the archbishop of Dublin William King, the Swiss banker Toussaint Pierre Lenieps and others, as well as the institutional letterbooks of the Virginia State Executive and the Royal Society in London.
In keeping with that tradition, the EE Letterbook will provide a space for the preservation of important information about letters and those who wrote and received them.