The dead letter office

I have been wanting to start up a new weekly feature on The Divagator to honor what is a dying—or already dead—art, letter writing. I am a big fan of literary correspondence and have always felt it such a shame that letters often go unread, sometimes simply because we forget they’re out there. In most cases, unless you were schooled in literature or simply have a fanatical taste for one author or another, folks tend to pass over a writer’s collected letters, even when they’ve read pretty deeply in an author’s oeuvre.

So, to remedy this, each week The Divagator will post a column titled “Dead Letters” which will take a look at one letter (or excerpts of very long letters). Some will be famous; others won’t. Hope you enjoy, and if you have suggestions for the column, feel free to email me.