This volume focuses on the development of mail services between ca. 1780 and 1860. It takes as its starting point John Palmer’s proposal to reform the mail coach system in the 1780s. As part of this volume, the following themes and subjects are covered:

• Mail services prior to the introduction of the penny post, including the rise and fall of the mail coach; correspondence and surveillance during the Napoleonic wars; the emergence of local penny posts; and debates about the franking privileges of Members of Parliament.
• Campaigns for and against the introduction of Rowland Hill’s scheme for penny postage between 1837 and 1840.
• Cultural responses to, and repercussions of, the introduction of the penny post in 1840.
• The 1844 letter opening scandal.
• The development of mail infrastructure from 1840 onward, including the development of rural post routes and the use of the railways for the conveyance of the mail.

Karin Koehler is a Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Bangor University. Her research explores the relationship between nineteenth-century literature and connective infrastructure, focusing on Anglophone and Welsh-language material.

Nicola Kirkby held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Royal Holloway, London (2019-2023), investigating nineteenth-century infrastructure and literary culture. Her works include Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).

Kathleen McIlvenna is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Derby. Her research focuses on histories of work, health and retirement in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

Ellen Smith is a historian and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. Her work explores communication cultures in colonial South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Harriet M. Thompson is Visiting Research Fellow in nineteenth-century literature and culture in the Department of English, King’s College London. Her research explores the relationship between communications technologies and print culture.

Eleanor Hopkins is a Senior Policy Adviser in Higher Education & Research at the British Academy. She provides strategic oversight of the Academy's Research & Development (R&D), innovation and skills policy.