Selected Letters


Charlotte Brontë - 2007
    In them Charlotte writes of life at Haworth Parsonage, her experiences at a Belgian school, and her intense feelings for the Belgian schoolteacher, M. Heger. She endures the agony of the death of her siblings, and enjoys the success as a writer that brings her into contact with the London literary scene. Vivid and intimate, her letters give fresh insight into the novels, and into the development of her distinct literary style. The only available edition, this selection is derived from Margaret Smith's three-volume edition of Bronte's complete letters. In addition to Smith's Editor's Preface, the edition includes a critical introduction by Janet Gezari, who looks at the relationship between Bronte's letters and her fiction and how the letters add to the debate about her literary persona and the split between her public and her private life.

Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne


John Keats - 2009
    Although they knew each other for just a few short years and spent a great deal of that time due to Keats' worsening illness, which forced him to live abroad, Keats wrote again and again about Fanny--his very last poem is called simply "To Fanny"--and wrote love letters to her constantly. She, in turn, would wear the ring he had given her until her death.This remarkable volume contains the love poems and correspondence composed by Keats in the heat of his passion, and is a dazzling display of a talent cruelly cut short.

The Victorian and the Romantic: A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time


Nell Stevens - 2018
    As publication loomed, Mrs. Gaskell was keen to escape the reviews. So, leaving her dull minister husband and dreary provincial city behind, she set off with her daughters to Rome. There she met a dazzling group of artists and writers, among them the American critic Charles Eliot Norton. Seventeen years her junior, Norton was her one true love. They could not be together--it would be an unthinkable breach of convention--but by his side and amidst that splendid circle, Mrs. Gaskell knew she had reached the "tip-top point of [her] life." In 2013, Nell Stevens is embarking on her PhD--about the community of artists and writers living in Rome in the mid-19th century--and falling head over heels for a soulful American screenwriter in another city. As her long-distance romance founders and her passion for academia never quite materializes, she is drawn to Mrs. Gaskell. Could this indomitable Victorian author rescue Nell's pursuit of love, family and a writing career? Lively, witty, and impossible to put down, The Victorian and the Romantic is a moving chronicle of two women each charting a way of life beyond the rules of her time.

Letters from Provence


Vincent van Gogh - 1990
    It reproduces extensive extracts from his correspondence and is illustrated with his paintings, drawings and facsimile letters. Van Gogh's letters are a testimony to his struggle to survive and work. Here, the combination of letters and illustrations, concentrating on the period when he painted his greatest works, aims to provide an insight into his daily life in Arles and St-Remy, his spiritual torment and the process of artistic creation itself. The author is an "Observer" journalist specializing in the arts, and has published four previous books, including "Young Vincent: The Story of Van Gogh's Years in England".

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Salámán and Absál Together With A Life Of Edward Fitzgerald And An Essay On Persian Poetry By Ralph Waldo Emerson


Omar Khayyám - 2010
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Jane Austen's Letters


Jane Austen - 1932
    They bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. Above all we recognize the unmistakable voice of the author of such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. We see the shift in her writing from witty and amusing descriptions of the social life of town and country, to a thoughtful and constructive tone while writing about the business of literary composition. R.W. Chapman's ground-breaking edition of the collected Letters first appeared in 1932, and a second edition followed twenty years later. Now in this third edition of Jane Austen's Letters, Deirdre Le Faye has added new material that has come to light since 1952, and re-ordered the letters into their correct chronological sequence. She has provided discreet and full annotation to each letter, including its provenance, and information on the watermarks, postmarks, and other physical details of the manuscripts, together with new biographical, topographical, and general indexes. Teachers, students, and fans of Jane Austen, at all levels, will find remarkable insight into one of the most popular novelists ever.

Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words


Dorothy Parker - 2004
    Combing through her stories, poems, articles, reviews, correspondence, and even her rare journalism and song lyrics, editor Barry Day has selected and arranged passages that describe her life and its preoccupations-urban living, the theater and cinema, the battle of the sexes, and death by dissipation. Best known for her scathing pieces for the New Yorker and her membership in the Algonquin Round Table ("The greatest collection of unsaleable wit in America."), Parker filled her work with a unique mix of fearlessness, melancholy, savvy, and hope. In Dorothy Parker, the irrepressible writer addresses: her early career writing for magazines; her championing of social causes such as integration; and the obsession with suicide that became another drama ("Scratch an actor...and you'll find an actress."), literature ("This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.") and much more.

De Profundis


Oscar Wilde - 1897
    Wilde wrote the letter between January and March 1897; he was not allowed to send it, but took it with him upon release. In it he repudiates Lord Alfred for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity; he had not forgotten Douglas's remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting." He also felt redemption and fulfillment in his ordeal, realizing that his hardship had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits


Les Standiford - 2008
    His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist.The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all.With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike.

The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh


Charlotte Mosley - 1996
    Their delicious letters, most never before published (for fear of speaking ill of the living), provide colorful glimpses of both lives, of an enduring but thorny friendship, and of the literary and social circles of London and Paris at midcentury. Waugh and Mitford came out of the group of London socialites known as the Bright Young Things; they both found best-selling success in the 1940s, Waugh with Brideshead Revisited, Mitford with The Pursuit of Love. In their letters they sharpened their wits at the expense of friends and enemies alike and eagerly dissected their friends, including Harold Acton, Graham Greene, the Sitwells, Duff and Diana Cooper, Randolph Churchill, and their favorite butt, Cyril Connolly. Waugh's pessimistic brand of Roman Catholicism clashed with Mitford's cheerful iconoclasm; her francophilia only fueled he

Love Letters of Great Men and Women


Ursula Doyle - 2009
    For some of these great men, love is a ‘delicious poison’ (William Congreve); for others, ‘a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music’ (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one’s heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert). But what about the other side of the story? What of the secret hopes and lives of some of the greatest women in history? Taken together, these love letters show that perhaps little has changed over the last 2,000 years. Passion, jealousy, hope and longing are all represented here – as is the simple pleasure of sending a letter to, and receiving one from, the person you love most. Includes letters by: Anne Boleyn * Beethoven * Edith Wharton * Mark Twain * Mary Wordsworth * Nell Gwyn (mistress of Charles II) * Elizabeth Barrett Browning * GK Chesterton * Queen Victoria * Napoleon Bonaparte * The Empress Josephine * Mary Wollstonecraft * Amadeus Mozart * Katherine Mansfield Praise for Love Letters of Great Men : 'The most romantic book ever' Daily Mail 'Inspired by the Sex and the City movie... Famous men caught with pen in hand and heart in mouth' The Times About The Author: Ursula Doyle was born in 1967. She lives in London.

Journals and Letters


Frances Burney - 1841
    From her youth in London high society to a period in the court of Queen Charlotte and her years interned in France with her husband Alexandre d'Arblay during the Napoleonic Wars, she captured the changing times around her, creating brilliantly comic and candid portraits of those she encountered - including the 'mad' King George, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and a charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. She also describes, in her most moving piece, undergoing a mastectomy at fifty-nine without anaesthetic. Whether a carefree young girl or a mature woman, Fanny Burney's forthright, intimate and wickedly perceptive voice brings her world powerfully to life.

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien


J.R.R. Tolkien - 1981
    The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien sheds much light on Tolkien's creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world: Middle-earth. Featuring a radically expanded index, this volume provides a valuable research tool for all fans wishing to trace the evolution of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Selected Letters


Emily Dickinson - 1971
    It provides crucial texts for the appreciation of America literature, women's experience in the ninteenth century, and literature in general.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë


Elizabeth Gaskell - 1857
    Gaskell was a friend of Bronte's and, having been invited to write the official life, determined to both tell the truth and honor her friend. This edition collates all three previous editions, as well as the manuscript, offering fuller information about the process of writing and a more detailed explanation of the text than any previous edition.