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Title: Principles of Letter-Writing: A Bilingual Text of Justi Lipsii Epistolica Institutio (Library of Renaissance Humanism) by Justus Lipsius, R. V. Young, M. Thomas Hester ISBN: 0-8093-1958-6 Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: February, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: Useful but repetitive read
Comment: I read this book because I wanted to learn the art of fine letter writing of olden times that is spoken of so often. This book does do that, in general terms. But too often the book repeats itself. Basically, letters should be written in a conversational tone (though not too conversational) that are to the point (no lengthy expositions). One annoying thing was that there were 20,000 footnotes, and so you had to keep on flipping to the back of the book rather than having the footnote at the end up the page (and usually the footnotes weren't all that important so I'd stop reading them, and then occasionally realize that I needed to read the footnote so that the sentence(s) would make sense. Also, half the book is an introduction by the translators that covers the bio of Justi Lipsii but mainly into the history of letters in the previous couple hundred years to Lipsii as well as the disagreements between the different schools of thought on letter-writing. I was appreciative of most of the intro, but the translators could have learned a lesson from Lipsii about succinctness. I only ended up reading about 80% of the 40-page intro and didn't feel as though I missed out anything.

But don't think this book is all bad. It's just footnotes and an intro that I wasn't crazy about, and those are relatively minor things.