A love letter is an expression of love in written form. However delivered, the letter may be anything from a short and simple message of love to a lengthy explanation and description of feelings.
A love letter is an expression of love in written form. However delivered, the letter may be anything from a short and simple message of love to a lengthy explanation and description of feelings.
One of the oldest references to a love letter dates to Indian mythology of more than 5,000 years ago. Mentioned in the Bhagavatha Purana, book 10, chapter 52, it is addressed by princess Rukmini to King Krishna and carried to him by her Brahmin messenger Sunanda. [1]
Examples from Ancient Egypt range from the most formal, and possibly practical – "The royal widow [...] Ankhesenamun wrote a letter to the king of the Hittites, Egypt's old enemy, begging him to send one of his sons to Egypt to marry her" – to the down-to-earth: Let me "bathe in thy presence, that I may let thee see my beauty in my tunic of finest linen, when it is wet". [2] A fine expression of literary skill can be found in Imperial China: when a heroine, faced with an arranged marriage, wrote to her childhood sweetheart, he exclaimed, "What choice talent speaks in her well-chosen words [...] everything breathes the style of a Li T'ai Po. How on earth can anyone want to marry her off to some humdrum clod?" [3]
In Ancient Rome, "the tricky construction and reception of the love letter" formed the center of Ovid's Ars Amatoria or Art of Love: "The love letter is situated at the core of Ovidian erotics". [4] Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and writer of Meditations , exchanged love letters with his tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto.
The Middle Ages saw the formal development of the Ars dictaminis, including the art of the love letter from opening to close. For salutations, "the scale in love letters is nicely graded from 'To the noble and discreet lady P., adorned with every elegance, greeting' to the lyrical fervors of 'Half of my soul and light of my eyes [...] greeting, and that delight which is beyond all word and deed to express'". [5] The substance similarly "ranges from doubtful equivoque to exquisite and fantastic dreaming", rising to appeals for "the assurance 'that you care for me the way I care for you'". [6]
The love letter continued to be taught as a skill at the start of the 18th century, as in Richard Steele's Spectator . [7] Perhaps in reaction, the artificiality of the concept came to be distrusted by the Romantics: "'A love-letter? My letter – a love-letter? It [...]came straight from my heart'". [8]
In Victorian America, it was expected that endearments and affection should be kept strictly private. Thus, exchanging love letters was a widespread courtship activity, particularly among the upper- and middle-class. Etiquette manuals, magazines, and book-length guides provided advice and sample letters while at the same time insisting that the writer should write naturally and sincerely. Reading and writing love letters was seen as an extremely intimate experience, akin to being in the presence of their loved one. [9]
The love letter continued to flourish in the first half of the 20th century – F. Scott Fitzgerald writes a 1920s Flapper "absorbed in composing one of those non-committal, marvelously elusive letters that only a young girl can write." [10]
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West's flirtatious love letters were one aspect of their complicated relationship. [11] Nigel Nicolson, Sackville-West's son, called Woolf's Orlando "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature" because of the inspiration Woolf took from her friend and lover, Sackville-West. [12]
Before the development of widespread means of telecommunications, letters were one of the few ways for a distant couple to remain in contact, particularly in wartime. The strains on either end of such a relationship could intensify emotions and lead to letters going beyond simple communication to expressions of love, longing and desires. It is claimed that the very act of writing can trigger feelings of love in the writer. [13] Secrecy, delays in transit, and the exigencies of maneuvers could further complicate the communication between two parties, whatever their degree of involvement. So precious could love letters be that even already read ones would even be brought into battle and read again for solace during a break in the action. Others would defer, compartmentalizing their feelings and leaving a letter folded away where it would cause no pain. [14]
During World War II, anti-aircraft gunner Gilbert Bradley and infantryman Gordon Bowsher exchanged intimate love letters, which are currently owned by the Oswestry Town Museum. [15] Because of the criminalization of homosexuality in England during the 1940s, large collections of queer love letters from that period are rare. "The Letter Men," a short film written and directed by Andrew Vallentine, recreates Bradley and Bowsher's love story through their letters. [16] [17] [18]
In the second half of the century, with the coming of a more permissive society, [19] and the immediacy afforded by the technology of the Information Age, the nuanced art of the love letter became old-fashioned, even anachronistic. [20] Despite the availability of new forms of communication, many couples still exchanged love letters. In 1953, Rachel Carson (naturalist and writer of Silent Spring ) met Dorothy Freeman and two exchanged about 900 letters over 12 years. [21] [22] While they destroyed some of their letters to protect themselves, Freeman's granddaughter edited the surviving ones, which were published in 1995. [21]
Other love letter-writers of the 20th century include anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena Hickok. [12]
With the arrival of the Internet and its iconic AOL notice "You've Got Mail", written expressions of love made a partial comeback – and provided the plot device for a 1998 romantic comedy by that name, You've Got Mail . So far out of fashion had written love letters fallen that in the 2000s one can find websites where advice is given on how to write one. [23]
In mid-2000, a computer worm named ILOVEYOU spread rapidly by sending malicious emails to contacts pretending to contain a love letter.
As ever, an advantage of written communication – being able to express thoughts and feelings as they come to a writer's mind – remains. For some this is easier than doing so face to face. Also, the very act of communicating a permanent expression of feelings to another conveys the importance of the writer's emotions to the recipient.[ citation needed ]
In contrast, in mobile, Twitter or Tweet, "telegraphese" is widespread, and a sign-off such as "LOL! B cool B N touch bye" could have the ring of being composed by a "disinterested young mother". [24]
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A love letter has no specific form, length, or writing medium; the sentiments communicated, and how, determine whether a letter is a love letter or not.
The range of emotions expressed can span from adulation to obsession, and include devotion, disappointment, grief and indignation, self-confidence, ambition, impatience, self-reproach and resignation. [25]
A love letter may take another literary form than simple prose. A historically popular one was the poem, particularly in the form of a sonnet. Shakespeare's sonnets are particularly cited. Structure and suggestions of love letters have been examined in works such as 1992's The Book of Love: Writers and Their Love Letters and the 2008 anthology Love Letters of Great Men . Cathy Davidson, author of the former, confesses that after reading hundreds of love letters for her collection, "The more titles I read, the less I was able to generalize about female versus male ways of loving or expressing that love". [26]
After the end of a relationship, returning love letters to the sender or burning them can be a release to their recipient, or intended to hurt their author. In the past, return could also be a matter of honor, as a love letter, particularly from a lady, could be compromising or embarrassing, to the point where the use of "compromising letters...for blackmailing or other purposes" [27] became a Victorian cliche.
While scented stationery for love letters is commercially available, some writers prefer to use their own perfume to trigger emotions specifically associated with being with them.[ citation needed ]
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
A letter is a written message conveyed from one person to another through a medium. Something epistolary means that it is a form of letter writing. The term usually excludes written material intended to be read in its original form by large numbers of people, such as newspapers and placards, although even these may include material in the form of an "open letter". The typical form of a letter for many centuries, and the archetypal concept even today, is a sheet of paper that is sent to a correspondent through a postal system. A letter can be formal or informal, depending on its audience and purpose. Besides being a means of communication and a store of information, letter writing has played a role in the reproduction of writing as an art throughout history. Letters have been sent since antiquity and are mentioned in the Iliad. Historians Herodotus and Thucydides mention and use letters in their writings.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf published on 14 May 1925. It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.
Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH, usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer.
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, first published in September 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's colleges at the University of Cambridge.
Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. Inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend, it is arguably one of her most popular novels; Orlando is a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.
Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homosexuality" implies a more permanent state of identity or sexual orientation. It has been depicted or manifested throughout the history of the visual arts and literature and can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "pertaining to or characterized by a tendency for erotic emotions to be centered on a person of the same sex; or pertaining to a homo-erotic person."
A romantic friendship, passionate friendship, or affectionate friendship is a very close but typically non-sexual relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in contemporary Western societies. It may include, for example, holding hands, cuddling, hugging, kissing, giving massages, or sharing a bed, without sexual intercourse or other sexual expression.
The Hours, a 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham, is a tribute to Virginia Woolf's 1923 work Mrs. Dalloway; Cunningham emulates elements of Woolf's writing style while revisiting some of her themes within different settings. The Hours won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 film of the same name.
Nigel Nicolson was an English writer, publisher and politician.
Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson is the 1973 biography of writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West compiled by her son Nigel Nicolson from her journals and letters.
Jane Baillie Carlyle was a Scottish writer and the wife of Thomas Carlyle.
The Edwardians (1930) is one of Vita Sackville-West's later novels and a clear critique of the Edwardian aristocratic society as well as a reflection of her own childhood experiences. It belongs to the genre of the Bildungsroman and describes the development of the main character Sebastian within his social world, in this case the aristocracy of the early 20th century.
“I ... try to remember the smell of the bus that used to meet one at the station in 1908. The rumble of its rubberless tyres. The impression of waste and extravagance which assailed one the moment one entered the doors of the house. The crowds of servants; people’s names in little slits on their bedroom doors; sleepy maids waiting about after dinner in the passages. I find that these things are a great deal more vivid to me than many things which have occurred since, but will they convey anything whatever to anyone else? Still I peg on, and hope one day to see it all under the imprint of the Hogarth Press, in stacks in the bookshops.”
As the use of letters increased in popularity, guides began to emerge on how to correctly write and form a letter and as to what was proper, and what was not. Many of these Victorian conventions are a way of understanding tensions in nineteenth-century England, such as the urge to speak from the heart, but never more than was proper.
Ling Shuhua, also known as Su-hua Ling Chen after her marriage, was a Chinese modernist writer and painter whose short stories became popular during the 1920s and 1930s. Her work is characterized by her use of symbolism and boudoir literature.
Autobiografiction is a literary fiction genre that blends autobiography with fiction; it fictionalizes autobiographical experiences, often by altering them, attributing them to fictional characters or reinventing them into other experiences. The concept of autobiografiction was invented by Stephen Reynolds in 1906, and then researched and described in depth by Max Saunders in 2010.
The Land is a book-length narrative poem by Vita Sackville-West. Published in 1926 by William Heinemann, it is a Georgic celebration of the rural landscape, traditions and history of the Kentish Weald where Sackville-West lived. The poem was popular enough for there to be six print runs in the first three years of its publication aided in part by its winning the Hawthornden Prize for Literature.
(Winifred) Aileen Pippett née Side was a British journalist and biographer resident in the United States, author of the first full-length biography of Virginia Woolf, The Moth and the Star, first published in 1953.
