BS: cross-written letters

26 Sep 16 - 04:26 PM (#3811452)
Subject: cross-written letters
From: keberoxu

My first look at a cross-written letters was a photograph plate in a biography of the author George MacDonald. Before this, I did not know that cross-writing existed, nor had ever seen a piece of writing or a letter that was cross-written. From this it can be inferred that I had never paid a lot of attention to Jane Austen who often cross-wrote her many letters in order to save on postage.

Austen's cross-writing is at ninety degrees, and I find it really a strain on the eyes to puzzle it out. The family of MacDonalds, a number of whose letters are quoted, and some photographed, in Rolland Hain's "Victorian Mythmaker" biography, preferred forty-five degrees to ninety degrees, judging from the photos. It is easier to read the forty-five degree cross-writing, there is something about the diagonal slant that is more quickly understood by the eye.

What is your acquaintance / experience with cross-written documents?

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26 Sep 16 - 05:08 PM (#3811462)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Jack Campin

My wife has a cross-written diary written by an ancestor who was a cook with the British Army in Afghanistan in the late 19th century. Some day I will attempt to decipher it.

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27 Sep 16 - 06:28 AM (#3811558)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Mr Red

I've written a few angry letters.

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27 Sep 16 - 09:00 AM (#3811575)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Senoufou

Mr Red, get your coat at once!

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27 Sep 16 - 02:35 PM (#3811625)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Mr Red

will an acrostic T-Shirt do?

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27 Sep 16 - 03:24 PM (#3811634)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Senoufou

Hahaha!

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28 Sep 16 - 08:33 AM (#3811725)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: mkebenn

Dense dull tool here. What is cross writing? Mike

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28 Sep 16 - 09:24 AM (#3811727)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Senoufou

Mike, over 150 years ago, people used to try and save paper and postage (charged by the sheet) so they wrote across the page, then turned the paper 90 degrees and wrote across the written lines. It's quite hard to decipher, especially when written with a pen nib dipped in ink.

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28 Sep 16 - 05:21 PM (#3811801)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: keberoxu

Mike, Jane Austen is a famous example. Her personal letters, preserved in archives, are sometimes cross-written.

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28 Sep 16 - 06:57 PM (#3811815)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Charmion

When I worked in the Manuscript Division of the Public Archives of Canada (as it then was), the cross-written letter was the bane of my existence. People who needed to save the cost of posting an extra sheet of writing paper tended also to use cheap, gall-based ink and a nasty steel-nibbed pen, and the net result was illegible after a century in storage. Even when fresh, such missives could be puzzled out only by the eye of love.

The practice died out rapidly as postage costs dropped with the expansion of railways and the introduction of steam-powered mail ships.

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29 Sep 16 - 04:46 PM (#3811914)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: mkebenn

Thanks, folks. I can't imagine. People have trouble reading my script without any help. Mike

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30 Sep 16 - 10:37 AM (#3812049)
Subject: RE: BS: cross-written letters
From: Stilly River Sage

Cross-written letters Google image search.

We have a number of them in our Special Collections at the university where I work, and grad students and staff with an eye for such things have had the task of transcribing them. I will note that it works best when you use a very sharp pen and the writing style is rather spindly elongated cursive.

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