The following are actual cover letters for articles I submitted in hard copy; some of the longer established journals (e.g. PMLA) still require hard copy submission. A cover letter should include the main components of a business letter, and it should be very short and to the point. You may describe - briefly - how the article came about (i.e. based on work for a course, or based on a thesis chapter, etc.). Be sure to mention your article's title - if the journal requires the article itself to be stripped of identifying details, the cover letter is your papertrail that confirms the article as yours. Read and follow all journal specifications to the letter: different journals have different specifications, even for a cover letter; hence, I present two samples. I also present the second in order to present the response I got: a round rejection. Rejections by scholarly editors are important and must not be read as discouragement, but as critique.

Sample 1 | Sample 2

Sample 1

Mark McCutcheon
[address - institutional, if possible]
[phone]
[email - institutional, if possible]

Dr Keith Negus, Co-ordinating editor (Articles)
Popular Music
[journal address]
[country, if different]

April 27, 2004

Dear Dr Negus,

Enclosed please find three copies of my essay '"Let the Bass Kick, All I'm Offering is the Truth": Techno, Science Fiction, and the Critique of Economic Rationalization' for submission to Popular Music.

The essay, including end matter, comprises 3240 words (12 pages in total); three copies each of the two photographs to which the essay refers are also enclosed. Please note that I have tried to document some of the 'underground' cultural productions studied herein - e.g. white label records, dance party performances, online forum postings - with as close adherence as their available data permit to your journal's citation specifications.

Thank you for considering this submission to your journal. I look forward to your reply.

With my best regards,

[signature]

Mark McCutcheon, PhD Candidate
School of English and Theatre Studies
University of Guelph

Sample 2

Mark McCutcheon
[address - institutional, if possible]
[phone]
[email - institutional, if possible]

The Editor
Studies in Romanticism
[journal address]
[country, if different]
02215

Dear editor of Studies in Romanticism,

Please find enclosed two copies of my essay "Liber Amoris and the Lineaments of William Hazlitt's Desire" (33 pages), which I submit for your consideration. As per your submission guidelines, the essay adheres to MLA style and is accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Abstract:
This essay argues that the discourse of prostitution provides an organizing yet curiously understudied context for William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris. Of central importance to this argument is the defamation of Sarah Walker's character, which has been perpetuated by a critical tradition that has tended to accept Hazlitt's word on Walker without question and consequently to dismiss feminist interpretations that attend to the specific historical contingencies determining his representation. By reviewing the critical literature on Hazlitt's "book of love," and by paying fresh attention to the text itself -- an attention rewarded by the discovery of heretofore unnoticed quotations -- the essay advances a feminist reading of this book as a travesty of romance in which Hazlitt's libertinism intersects suggestively with his radical politics.

I look forward to your reply, and wish you the best with Studies in Romanticism and your various other endeavors.

Sincerely,

[signature]

Mark McCutcheon

Editor's reply to Sample 2

24 April 2003

Dear Mr. McCutcheon:

Im sorry to have to disappoint you, but we have decided against publishing your essay on the Liber Amoris. Assuming we understand it correctly, your idea of comparing the sexism (even if assumed for parodic intentions) of Hazlitt's portrait of Sarah Walker in the book with the discourse of certain contemporary critical receptions of it is a clever one, but--that said--we often found your argument so convoluted with innuendo as to be hard to construe. And there is finally something a bit weak about the essay's conclusion: it seems more interested in attaching itself to an already extant critical interpretation than in saying something of its own about the book. Considering the occasional aggression of the argument, and the rather alarming (under the circumstances) endorsement of Derrida's metaphoric "hymen," the essay finally comes to seem a little overdone. We're sorry if this reaction seems ungenerous, and we appreciate the essay's scholarship and intelligence, but it seemed to us to have a bit too much effect for its own good as a coherent argument.

Sincerely

[Editor's name]