Those of you in the D.C. area might want to stop by this exhibit at the Folger:

This exhibition devotes itself to the myriad processes of letterwriting: the penning, sending, receiving, reading, circulating, copying, and saving of letters. The text of a letter provides one part of the story, while its very tangibility –the ancient folds, the grime and fingerprints deposited by the writer, deliverer, and readers, the broken seals, the ink blots, the idiosyncratic spelling, the location of a signature–tells another. An understanding of a letter’s written and unwritten social signals brings into focus a fuller, grittier, and ultimately more convincing picture of everyday life in early modern England.

(Via WaPo.)