Writing letters – and let me expand that to emails or text messages with enough sentences to warrant interpunction – so often ignites amorous relationships. The visceral, urgent conviction that certain information must find its way to the desired other fuels the fires of intimacy and attraction. And while a sizzling back-and-forth can come close to a kind of foreplay, romantic correspondence forms the backbone of an entire literary genre: the epistolary form.
What draws letter-writers so strongly to romance? Could it be that letters offer characters a particular canvas, where vulnerability paints in bold strokes far more vividly than any omniscient narrator could? Is it that letters can override shyness, providing a space for expression without the immediate pressure of face-to-face interaction? Perhaps it’s the allure of delayed gratification at play: the tension of awaiting a response mirrors the pulse of blossoming romance.
Picture the trifecta of epistolary writing. Firstly, there’s the lone voice of the monophonic; a solitary writer in love, writing a letter in their room, unsure if it will be answered. Secondly, the duet of the dialogic; the quintessential exchange encapsulating monogamous love. Thirdly, the polyphonic, with correspondence shared among three characters or more, famously found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In this third realm, intrigue thrives, and tension is ignited by varying degrees of awareness among speakers.
Some consider the epistolary form to be bourgeois in its proposal that interiority is already interesting enough, or, as Amitav Ghosh puts it, ‘bourgeois subjects can keep prattling on about their precious “inner lives”.’ However, that could be said of all fiction, and sometimes our imagination is all we have. Written exchange can reach far beyond interiority: letters transcend time, embody political winds, carry echoes of their material and psychological contexts. They inevitably transmit the imprint of their circumstances.
Within this delicate dance of writing, circumstance and emotion, something holds concrete ground: letters, with their intimate eloquence and ability to transform, stand as testament to interpersonal connection and the sheer artistry of romance.
Hello Leonora, Soy Anne Walsh 1
Leonora Carrington may be best known for her surrealist paintings, but interdisciplinary artist Anne Walsh became obsessed with her novel. Leonora’s The Hearing Trumpet (1974) follows an older woman who is placed in a care home, only to discover the suppressive behaviours of the caregivers. Together, the elderly create a magical revolution, in which age is not a reason to be discarded but celebrated. The Hearing Trumpet captivated Walsh so much that she began writing letters to Carrington while casting people – dead and alive and many quite famous – for roles in an imaginary play adaptation.
Hello Leonora brims with artistic infatuation, asking ‘Who will I be when I’m not typing L-E-O-N-O-R-A anymore?’ It blurs the line between a professional interest in and an almost romantic obsession with another artist’s work, and I find that crossing quite moving.
A Queen in Bucks County 2
Part poem, part manifesto, part prose, this book defies the logic of genre while borrowing the shape of the epistolary. Its protagonist, Turner, lives a horny, dangerously exciting life, calls himself an ‘epistoslut,’ and writes about it to his friends. It is lush and gossipy, continuously leaking out of its pages and into ‘real life’ as it makes explicit that Turner, or the author Gabriel (or both), have asked acquaintances, lovers, friends if they can be included in the story. This jarring past the fourth wall creates a sort of seizure, which repeats itself even more intimately when Gabriel poses questions towards the reader; to us. We are left with a bizarrely hot and ruinous reading experience.
The Letters of Mina Harker 3
Dodie Bellamy inhabits the central female character of Dracula as a young woman living in 1980s San Francisco. These letters ooze eroticism. An originator of the New Narrative literary movement – described by Bellamy herself as ‘a handful of sex-crazed gossips, my writing community’ – she writes corporeality through sex, desire, food and other consumption. Here, the epistolary form gives voice to the specific conditions of the writing: I imagine messy apartments, dashing out to catch a caffeine fix around the corner in bustling San Francisco, always running into someone.
The Color Purple 4
Set in early 20th century rural Georgia, this 1982 novel unveils the hardships endured by sisters Nettie and Celie. They encounter many forms of racial and sexual violence, all meticulously described in letters that Celie addresses to God. The book firmly establishes itself as an epistolary classic by virtue of the influential role its form plays in shaping the plot; through the letters, each character comes to life. As the narrative progresses, Celie’s addressee shifts from God to Nettie, and the sisterly exchange allows a potent intimacy to flourish. In one missive to Celie, Nettie states, ‘It has been a long time since I had time to write. But always, no matter what I’m doing, I am writing to you.’
Last Words from Montmartre 5
When Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995, she left behind twenty unpublished letters addressed to Xu, her ex-lover. Miaojin desperately wanted to reignite the relationship, and this longing can be felt in each page. Over the course of these letters, which, Miaojin assures the reader, do not have to be read in a specific order, a deep, passionate love between two young women emerges, the loss of which seems too great to bear. ‘But,’ Miaojin tries in her first letter, ‘let me see if – using these words as a little plot of land and my life as a cornerstone – I can build you a center. Okay?’
Ada or Ardor 6
Ada or Ardor follows the complex, unconventional love story between Ada and Van Veen. The book opens with the discovery that they are more closely related than previously thought: they are not cousins, but brother and sister. Ada and Van are separated in childhood, and reuniting years later sparks their passionate and forbidden love affair. The novel is presented through a combination of narrative styles, including diary entries, letters and memoir, which adds depth and complexity to the storytelling. It is an exploration of human relationships and the interplay of taboo, love and memory.
Letters to a Young Poet 7
When I read these letters for the first time, I was a 20-year-old student who had just moved to Sweden. This feels important to mention, not to bathe this reference in shame, but to contextualise it as, in a sense, a coming-of-age novel.
The titular young poet, trying to find his way towards writing creatively, turns to Rilke for guidance, which he generously offers in bite-sized wisdoms. But unlike your average self-help book, Rilke’s main message is to allow doubt and ambiguity. He writes: ‘Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.’ Younger me greedily took this to heart, and I still revisit when I need reminding.
Anemones: A Simone Weil Project 8
Written by one of my favourite poets, Lisa Robertson, Anemones begins with a letter to artist Benny Nemer, introducing Robertson’s interest in troubadour poetry. She describes how she locates the troubadour spirit of heresy and refusal in the work of both Simone Weil and Nemer. Robertson repeatedly returns to a phrase of Weil’s, which rings through the entire publication and goes like this: ‘To make six shirts from anemones and to keep silent: this is our only way of acquiring power.’ There is a delicacy and withdrawal here while nonetheless challenging power. Robertson reads this sensibility into Nemer’s work; an artist involved with floral arrangement, which inherently carries the seeds of its own decomposition. This intersection is the point of departure of this beautifully constructed text, intimately woven from the continuous search for resemblance between Weil, Nemer, the troubadour poets and Robertson herself.
Revolutionary Letters 9
Diane di Prima started writing these letters – formed from poems, manifestos and manuals – in 1968, and the political spirit of the period has clearly settled into her words. It is a sentiment suspicious of science, chemicals in our food, the CIA (which shows how certain deconstructions of this time period have now been co-opted by other political forces), and also of capitalism, gentrification and the US prison system. She writes:
if what you want is jobs
for everyone, you are still the enemy, you have not thought thru, clearly what that means
The Mausoleum of Lovers 10
French writer and photographer Hervé Guibert crafted many letters to his lover, T., and never sent them. At the height of this firm withholding of pleasure, Guibert
collated this writing in his journals. After his death in 1991, they were published as a rich tapestry of letters, diary entries, embryonic narratives and archival treasures, populated by friends and lovers as characters. With increasing frequency, his favourite thinkers appear in his journals, too. Guibert had an intimate relationship with Michel Foucault, who sustained a severe disbelief in transparency, whereas in his journals Guibert makes everything visible. This is partly accommodated by the epistolary form and its display of vulnerability, but also seems to stem from a belief in the beauty of full exposure. Perhaps, after keeping his work from T. for so long, Guibert just had to tell all.