Join us for the online launch event for Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter (MIT Press)! Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, if you wanted to send a letter you would have had to use letterlocking—the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. This new book reveals the secrets of this almost entirely forgotten practice, used by historical figures ranging from Elizabeth I and her spies to Japanese samurai lords, and which was once an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social classes. 

Jana Dambrogio (2008 Fellow) and Daniel Starza Smith will give a presentation about letterlocking’s intricate security techniques; will explain how the study emerged over years of collaborative work across conservation, the arts and humanities, and the sciences; and will show you how to fold a historical letter.

Jana Dambrogio is a conservator, researcher, educator, and artist. She works as the Thomas F. Peterson (1957) Conservator for Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries. She previously held positions at the US National Archives, the United Nations, and the Vatican Apostolic Archives, where she was Kress fellow. While working as a conservator in an ancient archive, she rediscovered a technique she coined, “letterlocking.” Over the years, she modeled thousands of letters, and with her coauthor Daniel Starza Smith, assembled the Unlocking History Research Group. The team focuses on developing this new field by creating resources to examine, document, categorize, and virtually unfold historic letters.

Daniel Starza Smith is senior lecturer in early modern English literature at King’s College London. His books include John Donne and the Conway Papers, Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England, and Liber amicorum H. R. Woudhuysen. He is general editor of the correspondence of John Donne for Oxford University Press.