Introduction

Letter writing was central to Elizabeth and John's lives for more than three decades. Their correspondence was a necessarily mutual endeavour that demanded willing commitment from both of them. They became, in a most memorable and apt phrase, ‘Coscribbler[s]’. They wrote their marriage into existence across three often difficult years of courtship conducted through correspondence, they sustained and nurtured that marriage through letter-writing, they offered one another succour and support across long pages, shared news and gossip, took decisions, worried out problems and evoked memories. Letter writing combated absence and dwelt in and built intimacy at a distance. Writing and receiving could deliver great pleasure – ‘Need I say the contents of [your last] have given me an infinite deal of pleasure. It has once more made my prospects happy and pleasing … and removed from my Breast such an [sic] heavy load it never before experienced’. Sometimes, though, they pained one another greatly with a misthought or expression or a misread word, an imagined neglect, or a post missed or misdirected. They wrote at snatched moments in the back rooms of shops in Rochdale, from home or warehouse, propped up in their sick beds and in the bedrooms of a hundred different inns.