…the other day in my bibliographic wanderings I typed “letters” into Encore (our jazzy new keyword search) and was rewarded with a list of recent acquisitions in collected and selected letters titles. Books of correspondence. It gives one pause to think about writing letters, the role that letter writing once held in people’s lives, and contrast that with the more ethereal-ephemeral (inconsequential?) electronic personal correspondence people conduct on blackberries. Perhaps a few days given over to reading letters might be fine June medicine? Anyway, among our recent acquisitions in books of letters are:
- Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder edited by Bill Morgan
- Letters from Black America edited by Pamela Newkirk
- Letters from Barcelona: An American Woman in Revolution and Civil War edited by Gerd-Rainer Horn
- Selected Letters of Florence Kelley edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Beverly Wilson Palmer
- Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid
Also, in 2006 there was a reissue of the Letters of E.B. White. I have been told that White took the same pains with is correspondence that he did with his professional writing (in thinking about his essays one can see how he probably didn’t perceive much of a difference) and so for a volume to really study the craft of letter writing, this would be a good start.