‘My writing looks like chicken feet’

Poorly educated authors were well aware of their own shortcomings, and apologised profusely for them. ‘Dispensa por la mal eqrito’ (sic) – excuse my bad writing – wrote Angela Suárez in Havana to her friend Manuel in Cancienes (Asturias) in 1922, and this was a constant refrain in ordinary writers’ correspondence. Bridget Lipton wrote to her sister Maria in Toowoomba, Queensland in 1902 to emphasise the pain and trouble she endured in order to compose a letter: ‘It taks me tow days to rite a letter’, she complained. Eufrosina Serventi in Parma congratulated her fiancé Pietro on his writing skill, telling him ‘Your writing looks like it’s printed, mine on the other hand really looks like chicken feet.’ Perhaps it was no coincidence that most of these apologies came from women, since the writing competence of lower-class women was a structural part of the uneven distribution of literacy skills almost everywhere.

Both men and women writers made up extraordinary excuses for their lack of familiarity with writing. Their grammar was unorthodox, their spelling incorrect, their punctuation often non-existent and they had difficulty maintaining a straight line. This chapter will review their difficulties, the inventive excuses they made and some of the ways in which they overcame their handicaps. For the completely illiterate, third parties could be enlisted as proxy writers or readers. The urgent need to write and to receive had to be satisfied somehow. Writing materials had to be found, time to write had to be carved out of the day, and suitable places in which to write a letter or a diary entry had to be improvised. Whatever level of competence ordinary writers enjoyed, writing remained crucial to their lives and identities.