Modern Commercial Correspondence

Modern Commercial Correspondence (1929) by John King Grebby – Macdonald and Evans

ISBN: None
Condition: Good
Published: 1929
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

There was a time when business correspondence was a serious undertaking, conducted by respectable gentlemen in stiff collars, secretaries armed with typewriters, and entire departments devoted to ensuring that a letter requesting payment for twelve missing boxes of soap was expressed with precisely the correct degree of commercial indignation.

Welcome to Modern Commercial Correspondence, John King Grebby’s splendidly earnest 1929 guide to the delicate art of writing business letters, published by Macdonald and Evans at a time when modernity meant possessing a telephone, a typewriter and perhaps an unusually adventurous filing cabinet.

In those distant days, commercial success depended not merely upon selling something, but upon knowing exactly how to inform somebody that you had sold it, dispatched it, invoiced it, failed to receive payment for it, and were now contemplating the regrettable necessity of involving a solicitor.

All this had to be accomplished without appearing rude, desperate, incompetent or insufficiently familiar with the conventions of respectable business English.

Grebby’s volume belongs to an age when correspondence was a professional discipline rather than an unfortunate by-product of electronic communication. Letters were carefully composed, typed, checked, signed, folded, placed into envelopes and entrusted to the postal service. Replies might take days, allowing everyone the luxury of reconsidering their position before embarking upon another exchange of exquisitely worded commercial hostility.

Compare this with the modern business email, frequently consisting of three misspelled words, an inexplicable abbreviation and a cheerful automated signature assuring the recipient that the sender is passionate about delivering excellence.

Published in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash, this particular celebration of commercial efficiency appeared at a moment when the international business community was about to discover that impeccable correspondence could not necessarily prevent the collapse of the entire financial system.

Nevertheless, the principles of clarity, courtesy, precision and persuasive communication remain surprisingly relevant. Indeed, one suspects that several contemporary organisations might benefit enormously from requiring their employees to read a few chapters before being permitted near an email account.

Condition: Good. A respectable surviving hardback approaching its centenary, showing the natural effects of age, handling and previous ownership. Its traditional cloth binding has acquired some of the character expected of a volume that has witnessed generations of changing office practices.

No ISBN, naturally. In 1929, books were identified through publishers, authors and titles, without the assistance of barcodes, digital databases or seventeen incompatible inventory-management systems.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where obsolete business practices are celebrated, vintage office manuals are treated with appropriate dignity, and all complaints should preferably be submitted in triplicate.

An entertaining historical curiosity for collectors of commercial literature, business history, secretarial training and the lost art of writing a thoroughly devastating letter while remaining impeccably polite.

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