  Huge advances in understanding patterns of human communication, and the
underlying social networks where it takes place, have been made recently using
massive automatically recorded data sets from digital communication, such as
emails and phone calls. However, it is not clear to what extent these results
on human behaviour are artefacts of contemporary communication technology and
culture and if the fundamental patterns in communication have changed over
history. This paper presents an analysis of historical epistolary metadata with
the aim of comparing the underlying historical communication patterns with
those of contemporary communication. Our work uses a new epistolary dataset
containing metadata on over 150 000 letters sent between the 16th and 19th
centuries. The analyses indicate striking resemblances between contemporary and
epistolary communication network patterns, including dyadic interactions and
ego-level behaviour. Despite these positive findings, certain aspects of the
letter datasets are insufficient to corroborate other similarities or
differences for these communication networks.
