Email system/Bibliography

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RFCs

RFC-1939, STD-53 (1996), "Post Office Protocol - Version 3", J. Myers, M. Rose, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1939. IETF Standard. POP3, the most common protocol used by mail clients to access a mailstore.

RFC-2045..2049 (1996), "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)", Parts 1..5, N. Freed, N. Borenstein, K. Moore, J. Klensin, J. Postel, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2045 ... IETF Standards Track. Extensions to allow encoding of graphics and other non-ASCII content in email message bodies.

RFC-3501 (2003), "Internet Message Access Protocol - Version 4rev1", M. Crispin, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501. IETF Standards Track. An access protocol more versatile than POP3, allowing messages to be organized and kept at the mailstore.

RFC-5321 (2008), "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", J. Klensin, ed., http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321. IETF Draft Standard. Original SMTP plus recent extensions (ESMTP).

RFC-5322 (2008), "Internet Message Format", P. Resnick, ed., http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322. IETF Draft Standard. Basic email message formats, including headers.

RFC-5598 (2009), "Internet Mail Architecture", D. Crocker, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5598. IETF Informational document. A detailed look at email system architecture.

Textbooks

L.Peterson, B.Davie (2007). Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 4th. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 0-12-370548-7.  Sect. 9.1.1 "Electronic Mail". Discussion of email in the most popular networks text.

W. Richard Stevens (1994). TCP/IP Illustrated, vol. 1, The Protocols. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-20163346-9.  Excellent reference on the underlying TCP/IP protocols; chapter 28 on SMTP.