Letters are one of the most abundant and important sources for medieval history, preserving evidence for a wide range of events and individuals. The study of letters and letter collections has also been central to the emergence of important fields of research such as the history of friendship and medieval social and political network analysis. Letters are, however, difficult to interpret, partly because of their literary or rhetorical nature and partly because they survive mostly not as originals but as copies in archival registers or literary letter collections, and these circumstances have given rise to debates on the nature of the genre and the authenticity of letters. This entry gives an overview of the sources for medieval epistolography, and of modern scholarship on letters and letter collections, leading to the current consensus that letter collections represent coherent literary texts designed to present selective images of their authors to posterity. Three key areas are then introduced in more detail: the rhetorical tradition of letter writing, medieval and modern attempts to define the genre, and the practicalities of composing and sending letters and compiling letter collections. This is followed by a discussion of the interpretation of letters and letter collections, introducing recent interpretive concepts such as narrativity and communicative function. The entry concludes with a historical sketch of the development of the genre with select examples.
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