22 January (1884): Oscar Wilde to Waldo Story
Oscar Wilde married Constance Lloyd on May 29, 1884. Below, Wilde outlines the outset of their engagement to Waldo Story…
21 January (1958): George Eliot to John Blackwood
After receiving a letter from Charles Dickens that both praised her work and hinted at her true identity (which we published here last week), George Eliot wrote the below letter to her publisher. “The iron mask of my incognito,” she … Continued
Staff Picks
In The Enigma, a documentary on the Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter (available in its entirety on Youtube), you will discover Richter’s great gift for storytelling: he is terse, tense, and wonderful, telling a story just as he plays the piano—with … Continued
Staff Picks: Viktor Shklovsky, Autochrome Photography
These color photographs are some of the first of their kind, taken by the Lumière Brothers using an irregular screen plate filter made of dyed grains of potato starch. I was shocked by the difference between these and black and white … Continued
18 January (1858): Charles Dickens to George Eliot
Charles Dickens, upon reading George Eliot’s first published work Scenes of Clerical Life, wrote Eliot a letter expressing his profound admiration for the work, as well as some doubts as to her male pseudonym: “I have observed what seem to … Continued
17 January (1918): Rudyard Kipling to J.H.C. Brooking
“I have had some experience in the unauthorized use of my verses, but I confess that what you have done is outside all my experience…”
16 January (1854): Jane Welsh Carlyle to Mary Smith
Mary Smith (1822-89) was a schoolmistress, poet, lecturer, and journalist who took part in local politics, lectured, gave public readings, took up the women’s cause and temperance, reported lectures and sermons, helped with a school for factory girls, and campaigned … Continued
Super Sad, Super Swedish Love Story
“Watch out,” the group therapist had said, “she’s watching a lot of Bergman.”
15 January (1849) Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey
“The days pass in a slow, dark march; the nights are the test; the sudden wakings from restless sleep, the revived knowledge that one lies in her grave, and another not at my side, but in a separate and sick bed.”
14 January (1823): Mary Shelley to Jane Williams
Below, a lengthy letter from Mary Shelley to Jane Williams detailing, among other things, feelings of isolation while living in Italy after the death of two of her children, a miscarriage that nearly killed her, and the death of her … Continued