| Description |
xiv, 302 pages ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-299). |
| Form |
Also issued online. |
| Contents |
Thomas Wolfe. After Great Pain. Edith Wharton to W. Morton Fullerton. Colette to Leon Hamel about Henri de Jouvenel ("Sidi"). Joy Harjo to ̲̲̲̲̲. Remembrance of Love Past. Emilie du Chatelet to Duc de Richelieu. Charles Dickens to Mrs. Maria Sarah Bea |
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1. Falling in Love. Sappho to Anactoria. James Hackman to Martha Reay. John Keats to Fanny Brawne. Nathaniel Hawthorne to Sophia Peabody. Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet. Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo. Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. Rosa Luxemburg to Leo Jogiches. Jack London to Anna Strunsky. Edith Wharton to W. Morton Fullerton. Wallace Stevens to Elsie Moll. Zelda Sayre to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Ogden Nash to Frances Leonard Nash. Margery Latimer to Carl Rakosi about Jean Toomer. Henry Miller to Anais Nin. John Steinbeck to Elaine Scott. Pablo Neruda to Matilde Urrutia. John Cheever to ̲̲̲̲̲̲ -- 2. Love's Infinite Variety. Love Is Tender. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto. Harriet Beecher Stowe to Calvin Stowe. Samuel Clemens to Olivia Langdon Clemens. Anton Chekhov to Olga Knipper. Love Is Passionate. Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert. Emma Goldman to Ben Reitman. Jean Cocteau to Valentine Gross. Celine (Louis Destouches) to Elizabeth Craig. Triangles. Jane Welsh to Thomas Carlyle. Geraldine Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle. Edgar Allan Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman. Edgar Allan Poe to Annie L. Richmond. Maud Gonne to William Butler Yeats. D. H. Lawrence to Ernest Weekley. Delmira Agustini to Manuel Ugarte. Anais Nin to June Miller. December Love. George Eliot (Marian Evans) to John Cross. Emma Goldman to Arthur Swenson. H. L. Mencken to Sara Haardt. Brenda Venus to Henry Miller. Henry Miller to Brenda Venus. Epistolary Love. Charles Baudelaire to Apollonie Sabatier. James Whitcomb Riley to Elizabeth Kahle. George Bernard Shaw to Ellen Terry. Friendship. Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey. Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Lydia Maria Child to Anne Whitney. Tennessee Williams to Maria Britneva St. Just. Parents and Children. George Sand to her mother, Madame Maurice Dupin. Elizabeth Ramsey to her daughter, Louisa Picquet. Samuel Clemens to the Rev. J. H. Twichell about Susy. F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter, Frances ("Pie") Fitzgerald. Anne Sexton to Linda Gray Sexton -- 3. Absence. Separation. Heloise to Abelard. Wolfgang von Goethe to Christiane Vulpius. Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine. Susan Chesnutt to Charles Chesnutt. Natalie Barney to Liane de Pougy. Henry James to Hendrik C. Andersen. F. O. Matthiessen to Russell Cheney. Langston Hughes to Sylvia Chen. John Melby to Lillian Hellman. Vaclav Havel to Olga Havel. The Final Separation. Voltaire to Madame Louise Denis, in memory of Madame Emilie, Marquise du Chatelet. Sullivan Ballou to Sarah Ballou. Samuel Clemens to W. D. Howells, in memory of his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens. Thomas Hardy, poem on the death of his wife, Emma -- 4. Love Hurts. Unrequited Love. George Eliot (Marian Evans) to Herbert Spencer. Emily Dickinson to "Master" Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist. Federico Garcia Lorca to Salvador Dali. Anne Sexton to Philip Legler. Obstacles. Rochester to Elizabeth Barry. Stendhal (Henri Beyle) to Madame Dembowski. Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning. Virginia Stephen to Leonard Woolf. Conrad Aiken to Clarissa Lorenz. The Good Fight. Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Anya G. Dostoyevskaya. Marcel Proust to Genevieve Straus. John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf -- 5. The End of Love. Dear John/Dear Jane. George Gordon, Lord Byron, to Lady Caroline Lamb. Percy Bysshe Shelley to Harriet Shelley. Stendhal (Henri Beyle) to Comtesse Clementine Curial. Agnes von Kurowsky to Ernest Hemingway. Katherine Anne Porter to Matthew Josephson. Nelson Algren to Simone de Beauvoir. Betrayed and Abandoned. Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay. Charlotte Bronte to Constantine Heger. Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. Liane de Pougy to Natalie Barney. Aline Bernstein to |
| Summary |
The late John Cheever once insisted that "saving a letter is like trying to preserve a kiss." Luckily for us, the loved ones of great writers ranging from Sappho to Anne Sexton, from Anton Chekhov to Mr. Cheever himself have ignored that clever dictum. In more than one hundred of the most powerful, witty, wicked and whimsical letters ever written, we chronicle passion's erratic progress. Why should Marcus Aurelius's amorous words sit side by side with John Steinbeck's. |
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letter to the woman who inspired much of his late work? Distinguished scholar Cathy Davidson argues that the love letter is a form of literature all its own, a genre whose language may have changed from ancient Rome to twentieth-century America but whose basic form and content remain the same. For if all literature is a kind of seduction, then the love letter becomes the perfect vehicle for writers to hone their seductive skills. With novelistic flair, Ms. Davidson has. |
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arranged these letters as though they were all part of one romance - a romance in which any of us may have played a part. From the joy of "Falling in Love" to the pain of "Unrequited Love," we chart the evolution of that most hard-to-define emotion. These pages are filled with glorious examples of writers being just like the rest of humanity, to wit: willing to stake so much on what at times seems like nothing more than a promise and an act of faith. How delightful to. |
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discover the master of light verse Ogden Nash writing tenderly to a woman he first saw across a crowded room nine months earlier: "This is a particularly gifted and intelligent pen. Look what it's writing now: I love you. That's a phrase I can't get out of my head - but I don't want to. I've wanted to try it out for a long time; I like the look of it and the sound of it and the meaning of it." Of course what writers do better than anyone else is to write about love. |
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Through Ms. Davidson's deft touch, The Book of Love becomes a treasure trove of literary discovery. She prefaces each letter with biographical comments that read like novelettes. From the tragic lovers Heloise and Abelard to love that became literature, such as Ernest Hemingway's affair with Agnes von Kurowsky, to Samuel Clemens's heart-breaking expression of love and grief for his deceased child...all have a place in this marvelous anthology. Though originally addressed. |
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to only one reader, each of these letters is now a letter to the world that speaks to us all. |
| Subject |
Love-letters.
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Authors -- Correspondence.
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| Added Author |
Davidson, Cathy N., 1949-
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| ISBN |
0671701339: $22.00 |
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9780671701338 |
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