To put it another way, in Three Guineas reading is indistinguishable from
perlustration, the interception and inspection of private correspondence that one would normally associate with an intrusive security state.
Izmozik, "Chernye kabinety": Istoria rossiiskoiperliustratsii, XVIII-nachalo XX veka ("Black Offices": The History of Russian Perlustration, 18th-Early 20th Centuries).
Perlustration was one of the three principal secret methods of security policing and information gathering before the rise of the electronic wizardry culminating in the exploits of the National Security Agency (and the counterexploits of Edward Snowden).
Rather, what looms through interstices in the net is a worldwide spying machine of post-Orwellian proportions, and it's no good telling me, with a smile that is half condescension and half reassurance, that
perlustration was very likely the fate of many a letter delivered by the Pony Express.
7.9.5 Developments in Australia and New Zealand Samuel Beswick, Case Note,
Perlustration in the Pathless Woods: Hamed v R, 17 AUCKLAND U.L.
Pam Ingham, of Congleton, talks about
perlustration to Wrexham Hospital Flower Arrangers, War Memorial Club, Wrexham, 7.30pm
1988 "From Deuteronomy to Deniability: A Historical
Perlustration on White-Collar Crime." Justice Quarterly 5: 7-32.
Les qualites persuasives du recit de voyage sont notamment etudiees par Daniel Claustre ("La
Perlustration, ou comment explorer le Groenland").
Several hours were to elapse, in the keeping of his lackeys, before the Envoy of My Lord the Count of Tyrol might see or even be seen to by His Grace the Duke of Ferrara, though from such neglect no deliberate slight need be inferred: now that I have had an opportunity - have had, indeed, the obligation - to fix on His Grace that
perlustration or power of scrutiny for which (I believe) My Lord holds his Envoy's service in some favor still, I see that the Duke, by his own lights or, perhaps, more properly said, by his own tenebrosity, could offer some excuse for such cunctation .
For example, Howell's Londinopolis, in a moment of daring originality, departs from Stow and insistently frames itself in terms of guide and guided, describing itself as "An Historicall Discourse or
Perlustration of the City of London, the Imperial Chamber, and chief Emporium of Great Britain." The conflation of linguistic and physical acts (talking and walking), both attributes of description, centers entirely on the observer, the one who walks through and comments on (a fixed) London.