A levélíró politikus. A levelezés szerepe a magyar politikai életben a 19. század második felében
The Letter-Writing Politician. The Role of Correspondence in Hungarian Political Life during the Second Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: Contrary to diaries and memoirs, which have recently been the object of methodological studies, the documentary value of letters, the features of their genre, the circumstances of the letter writing and the consequences of their later use have so far remained a field relatively neglected by the historians. The present study aims to elaborate on this topic, taking its material from the private letters (that is, letters not related to offi cial activities) written by some of the outstanding politicians (such as Lajos Kossuth or Ferenc Deák) in the course of the long 19th century. The study examines three questions in detail: the mixture of public and private themes in the letters, the letter-writing practices of the politicians (with a special emphasis on the genre of open letter), and the role of fictive letters in political life.

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