Ancient Epistolography Network

The Ancient Epistolography Network consists of a grouping of researchers based in Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology at the University of Manchester, including Jenny Bryan, Ruth Morello, Andrew Morrison and Antonia Sarri, as well as former CAHAE colleagues now elsewhere, such as Roy Gibson (Durham).

We aim to raise the profile of ancient letter writers from Plato to Sidonius Apollinaris (and beyond), and to galvanize the study of ancient letter collections.

Project

Since 2016 two members of the Network, Roy Gibson and Andrew Morrison, have been co-directing an AHRC-funded project on Ancient Letter Collections. The project PDRA is Antonia Sarri.

Events

Building on earlier conferences devoted to Pliny the Younger and to Ancient Letters (2004), we have organized an event on 'Lives and Letters: Epistolography and (Auto-) biography' (2012), and in June 2014 hosted a meeting (see below) that brought together a number of scholars working on the letter collections of Cicero and their reception. It is our plan that the informal grouping of scholars brought together at this event should evolve into a broader network of critics interested in developing events and research projects in the area of ancient Greek and Roman epistolography.

Subsequent events have included a conference on Philosophical Letters (2018) and an interdisciplinary e-workshop on Editing Letters (2020), organised by the Manchester Centre for Correspondence Studies, with which the Network collaborates closely.

Publications

Recent and key publications by the Manchester Ancient Epistolography Network include:

• Gibson-Morello (eds), Re-imagining Pliny the Younger (2003)
• Morello-Morrison (eds), Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography (2007)
• Gibson-Morrison, 'What is a letter?' (2007)
• Gibson-Morello, Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger (2012)
• Gibson, 'On the nature of ancient letter collections' (2012)
• Morrison, 'Narrative and Epistolarity in the "Platonic" Epistles' (2013)
• Morello, 'Writer and addressee in Cicero's letters' (2013)
• Morrison, ‘Pamela and Plato: ancient and modern epistolary narratives’ (2014)
• Gibson, 'Not dark yet. Reading to the end of Pliny's nine-book collection'
• Morello, 'Innovation and cliché: the letters of Caesar' (2017)
• Morrison, ‘Order and Disorder in the Letters of Alciphron’ (2018)
• Sarri, Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World (C. 500 BC-C. AD 300)(2018)
• Gibson, Man of High Empire: the Life of Pliny the Younger (2020)

Public Engagement

• Listen to Roy Gibson discuss the Letters of Pliny the Younger on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.

Videos for schools and similar will soon become available via the Ancient Letter Collections project!