Levelezés a 19. századi Magyarországon
Correspondence in 19th-Century Hungary

Summary/Abstract: Before the 19th century, correspondence in Hungary was a means of communication exclusively used by the social, economic and cultural elites. In the course of that century, however, as a result of social and economic modernisation, it filtered down the social scale, becoming part of everyday social practice and one of the cultural assets generally available. The first part of the study surveys those social and technical preconditions which allowed correspondence to become a mass phenomenon. It demonstrates the growing percentage of literate people within the overall population, and illustrates through examples the changes within the density and types of geographical mobility. It examines briefly the organisational and technical development of the state post, which provided the infrastructure of correspondence. Based on statistical date regarding the circulation of letters between 1831 and 1917, the author shows how correspondence gradually pervaded all layers of society in the Habsburg Monarchy in general and in the Hungarian Kingdom in particular. Comparisons with similar information from other countries clearly prove the close connection between the process of economic and social development and the density of communication. The second part of the study reconstructs with the help of Hungarian manuals of correspondence from the 19th century the norms of form, style and content which determined the rules of written self-representation. It demonstrates the generic diversity of correspondence, and pictures on the basis of sample letters how the social scope of correspondence widened to the extent of reaching by the debut of the 20th century the lowest layers of society (such as house servants).

• Details
• Contents