emacs for email

[James Freer]

I've been trying to set up emacs for reading mail. I'm a bit lost as
so far i haven't found whether to set up rc files like you do for mutt
[.procmailrc, .muttrc, mstmprc, .fetchmailrc] or what? Rmail or Gnus
is part of emacs i understood although one can replace with VM.

Be grateful for advice or links as i think i've been looking in the
wrong places - online manual seems v.brief and the emacs.pdf is a bit
thin.
thanks

james [uk]