To Whom It May Concern: The Letter as a Plot Device

During the Georgian and Regency Periods, when letters were practically household entertainment, discretion was key. Because a letter wasn’t just a letter — it was communication, evidence, and a binding social act all folded up. It passed through many hands, each one a potential leak. Once sent, you never knew who would read it. There were, after all, riskier possibilities than your siblings discovering your failed attempts at flirtation. Presumably the Georgian equivalent of having two home phones.

But it’s the risks involved that make letters such a fantastic plot device. Naturally, there were plenty of rules. Some were fairly obvious, such as don’t commit your plot to overthrow the monarchy to paper. Others were rather more supercilious. But whether the danger was political, social, or financial, the stakes were high. So just how much scandalous potential could one letter hold?

Georgian cross-writing to reduce number of pages used.

Breach-of-Contract

The chief rule of letter etiquette was that an unengaged man and woman could not privately correspond. Requesting a correspondence was actually a recognized step of a courtship, one with significant weight. In essence, it was a declaration of intent to marry. Consequently, if unengaged couples did write, and were discovered, they risked scandal.¹

The exchange was so consequential that letters could be entered as evidence in a breach-of-promise suit, a legal claim brought against someone who broke a serious promise to marry. Such cases were not uncommon. So while the notion of a love letter may seem romantic, the exchange carried very real social and legal consequences.

Maria Foote

One example is the Foote v. Hayne trial (1824). Maria Foote was a beautiful and charming actress who debuted at Covent Garden in 1814. Around 1815 she began a longterm relationship with Colonel Berkeley, who repeatedly promised marriage but never delivered, even after she bore him two children. In 1823 the wealthy but spineless Joseph Hayne, courted her; after learning of her past he still proposed, then broke off the engagement multiple times, prompting her to sue and win a £3,000 breach-of-promise judgment in 1824. Public sympathy landed firmly with Maria, and her 1825 return to the stage drew record-breaking crowds. She left acting after marrying the Earl of Harrington in 1831, allegedly living out her days as a well-loved Dowager Countess until her death in 1867. In my book, the Earl requires further review before I deem this a HEA.²

I'd argue Maria Foote's courtship with the Earl of Harrington could be an intriguing premise for a novelist to explore. But for now — while breach of promise weirdly isn't an overly popular element in the romance market, unmarried women secretly corresponding with gentlemen certainly is.

Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti

To Sir Phillip With Love by Julia Quinn

Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas

Blackmail

Letters weren’t only useful as evidence in a breach-of-promise suit; they could incriminate in countless other ways. Hence their popularity as a tool for blackmail. Perhaps it’s a ransomed love letter, or worse still a family secret of treason! The limit was only the foolishness of the writer..

But did this actually happen?

Well, for one, the term “blackmail” is anachronistic — it wasn’t widely used in its modern sense until much later. Rather, it began as Scottish Borderlands vernacular for protection money paid to reivers (raiders): a physical protection racket rather than an informational one.³ But “menacing” and “extorting” were certainly illegal. Alas, this is another example where history takes a darker turn. The reality was that the primary victims of extortion were queer men, as “sodomy” was a capital offense.⁴ There were, however, examples of unmarried women also facing extortion.

Source geriwalton.com

In 1857, an unmarried Glasgow socialite named Madeleine Smith discovered exactly how dangerous a love letter could be. The daughter of a prominent architect, Smith had spent two years in a secret affair with Pierre Emile L’Angelier, a clerk from Jersey whose negligible income made him an impossible match. Unwisely, Madeleine documented the affair in numerous frank and unmistakably passionate letters. When her family found a more suitable husband and she tried to extricate herself from L’Angelier, he refused to return the letters and threatened to show them to her father. Facing absolute ruin, Madeleine made three purchases of arsenic, and when L’Angelier was found dead of arsenic poisoning, Smith was put on trial for his murder. Personally, I don’t see the connection.

Nonetheless, those same letters that had been used against her were now entered as evidence and read aloud in open court. The brazen descriptions of desire scandalized the Victorian public — not that it took much. In the end, the jury returned the verdict of “Not Proven,” and Smith walked free. But, of course, the damage was already done.⁵

Four Nights with the Duke by Eloisa James

The Soldier’s Scoundrel by Cat Sebastian

Treason

During the Napoleonic Wars, there was another reason someone might be peeping through your mail: the state itself. To gather intelligence from foreign and diplomatic correspondence — as well as prevent its dissemination — the Crown’s Post Office ran a Secret Office that intercepted, opened, and copied letters in transit, then resealed them so neatly the recipient never knew. Like little sisters hadn’t been doing this for centuries…

The French Spy in England is a rarer motif than the English Spy in France — partly because the genre grew from an Anglophile tradition that likes its heroes English and in the Home Counties, and partly because the Crown’s counter-surveillance was so successful that French agents were thin on the ground, which leaves fewer examples to draw from. (Hence why one is notably absent here.) However, there remains additional untapped potential. Consider the Secret Office clerk, reading a stranger’s letters for the Crown, who falls in love with her through them… though honestly I’m not sure how the stalker-to-suitor arc resolves. But that’s why I’m the researcher and not the author.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

But now I really must be off to confirm my brother isn’t a Napoleonic agent.

1. https://janeaustenlf.org/pride-and-possibilities-further-articles/2024/5/9/issue-111-an-exploration-of-regency-letter-writing

2. https://readingroo.ms/4/8/5/0/48507/48507-h/48507-h.htm

3. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095510101?d=%2F10.1093%2Foi%2Fauthority.20110803095510101&p=emailAIMYuG0C.N4CI

4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-020-09925-y

5. https://blog.nrscotland.gov.uk/2017/07/18/madeleine-hamilton-smith-1835-1928-the-accused/