"Havemo quedado sin nada": Writing Practices and Linguistic Variation in Women's Letters of Request to Malaga Cathedral (19th Century)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the writing practices of a set of documents from the first decade of the 19th century, preserved in the Cathedral Archive of Malaga. Specifically, we will examine ten letters of request for financial aid that different women, related to de Music Chapel, sent to the Cathedral Chapter of the city during the early 19th century. We will attempt to characterise the writing traits present in the documents and relate them to their circumstances of issuance and writing. We will analyse issues such as the practice of graphic delegation, the presence or not of the autograph signature or the existence of different formal and graphic features.