The Youth’s Letter-Writer is unusual among works with the word “letter-writer” in the title. In the nineteenth-century, “letter-writer” most often referred to a collection of “model letters” that were less than useful: samples of business letters flowed into examples of how a rich elderly widow should decline a matrimonial offer from a poor young man, how a mother should decline the advances of a wouldbe suitor seeking to court a young woman he’s never even spoken to, how to plead the case of a sister whose father has disowned her, or how to request a loan from a friend (and how to decline the request). The Youth’s Letter-Writer is actually about … writing letters.

Farrar’s introduction to the craft of writing letters is in the form of a work of fiction. Young readers could follow fourteen-year-old Henry Moreton as he learns to write an interesting and informative letter. Practical information ranges from how to fold and seal the letter for mailing in an age without envelopes, how to address it, and how to sharpen and mend a quill pen.

The Youth’s Letter-Writer was originally published in 1834. The second edition of The Youth's Letter-Writer is available here, with transcriptions of contemporary reviews.