The introduction outlines the polyphonic and interactive character of Pliny the Younger’s Epistles by first looking at how Pliny constructs time and space of literary interaction in his social environment. The chapter then moves on with a discussion of interdiscursivity and generic interaction in Pliny’s letters and a review of scholarship on intertextuality. A case study of the triptych of letters 4.26-28 demonstrates how various forms of textual and non-textual interaction are combined in Pliny’s Epistles. Whereas the centrepiece of this series, Ep. 4.27 on the recitation of Sentius Augurinus’ poetry, focuses on oral exchange and mnemonic skills, the preceding letter (4.26) foregrounds the materiality of literature by playing with the motif of books as companions (comites) on journeys. The third letter (Ep. 4.28), on the other hand, emphasizes the visibility of famous writers whose portraits were placed and looked at in libraries. In addition to staging various forms of literary interaction, the triptych of Ep. 4.26-28 also showcases the letters’ intermediality. The introduction concludes with a key to the volume’s chapters.

This chapter undertakes a corpus linguistic exploration of the royal correspondence material, following the scribal/holograph division of the previous chapter. Using keyword analysis and lexical bundles, the analysis identifies features that firstly, differentiate royal correspondence from its non-royal counterpart; and secondly, differentiate scribal and holograph royal letters. The evidence correlates with the material analysis in Chapter 2, with formulaicity and consistency key elements of scribal letters which may have indexed a more overt and institutionalised royal power. Holograph letters, on the other hand, show a more variable and idiosyncratic make-up, providing a more personal frame to the epistolary interaction with a letter's recipient.

Edith Wharton’s personal letters have become integral to an understanding of Wharton’s life and literary production. Because of elements central to most academic projects, however, scholars are rarely able to embrace the many and varied aspects of Wharton which her letters reveal. Re-examining the letters offers a gallery of newly detailed Whartons, including the athletic teenager and happy new wife, the author who sometimes expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and classist views, and the world traveler who was domestically homey. Further, the letters demonstrate their own importance in her life: they were the means through which she maintained friendships (including those with the Berensons and with Gaillard Lapsley) that were vital to her emotional well-being. The letters reveal Wharton creating literary masterpieces and getting through the challenges of history and of everyday existence; they also demonstrate her thorough literariness, inventiveness, and humor. The re-examined personal letters offer a complex, contradictory, irreducible Wharton.