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“If I could write”: Margherita Datini andLetter Writing, 1385–1410*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ann Crabb
Ann Crabb*
Affiliation:
James Madison University
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Abstract

Margherita Datini’s correspondence with her husband Francesco presents a well-documented case of progress from partial to full literacy. In Margherita’s merchant world, letter writing was a major concern, and her household duties included frequent reports to her absent husband. First, she prided herself on her dictation, and then she turned her attention to reading and writing. A recently discovered autograph letter shows that she was writing at twenty-eight, earlier than previously thought, and she attained full literacy in her mid-thirties. After that, writing no longer seemed a challenge, and she returned to using a scribe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 1170 - 1206
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I wish to express my gratitude to the director of the Archivio di stato di Prato, Diana Toccafondi, and to all the Archivio’s staff for their help. In particular, I would like to thank Chiara Marcheschi for her valuable assistance with the transcription and interpretation of difficult passages. I would also like to thank Jane Couchman for her insightful suggestions as I was writing this article. The quoted phrase in the title comes from Margherita’s letter of 1 September 1395.

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