When regulated postal service was finally established in Great Britain and Royal Mail started to be carried on trains for the first time—somewhere around 1840— it unleashed a torrent of letter-writing among those who were able to do so. People routinely dashed off twenty-page letters three times a week to several correspondents simultaneously, not so much because they had anything particularly compelling to say to each other, but simply from the exhilaration of being able to say it—and have
