The Dead Letter Office Article

Comparatively, in the same week the matching section of “The Moonstone” appeared in Harper’s Weekly, an American publication, it was featured alongside several references, either textual or imagistic, to the now commonplace epistolary lifestyle. The opening page is comprised almost entirely of a image depicting the “Dead Letter Office” a place where the lost letters of the American postal service were laid to rest. The image alone reveals a pile of letters, offering a visual image of what will later become prominent in Collin’s text, but also highlighting the popularity of epistolary correspondence. The article that accompanies the image begins “Out of the 462,279,719 letters which annually pass through the United States mails, 4,306,508 are misdirected or unpaid and go to the Dead-Letter Office at Washington.” which demonstrates the both the magnitude and the fervor with which people approached the rapidly popularize Postal Service.