14 June (1940): Thornton Wilder to Sibyl Colefax
Your word months ago that you were sure it would be a long war terrified me, but now I draw comfort from it. Long enough...
13 June (1952): Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor
I’m not anti-Church by the way, but it’s intolerable that a man of Allen’s vitality should go the Tartuffian dumbshow of a fraudulent conversion...
12 June (1937): Virginia Woolf to Janet Case
I’m looking at boxes of Roger Fry’s letters and wondering how anyone writes a real life. An imaginary one wouldn’t so much bother me...
11 June (1966): Paul Bowles to James Leo Herlihy
I've never even had a remote insight into what was going to happen in any of my short stories, and I've always gone into them...
10 June (1949): Marianne Moore to Ezra Pound
You must not be profane, Ezra, without cause; or penny wise (no pun intended). Not to be in context where one belongs is misleading.
7 June (1845): Elizabeth Barrett Barrett to Robert Browning
I am like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the mouse in the wainscot.
6 June (1951): Ralph Ellison to Albert Murray
For me it’s just a big fat ole Negro lie, meant to be told during cotton picking time over a water bucket full of corn,...
5 June (1903): Edith Wharton to Sara Norton
I feel in America as you say you do in England—out of sympathy with everything...
4 June (1855): Fyodor Dostoevsky to Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva
The mere fact that a woman should treat me in so friendly a way was a great event in my life...
3 June (1935): John Fante to Carey McWilliams
I can truthfully say that I know one thing about novel-writing: reconcile yourself to the routine of disappointments...
31 May (1930): Dawn Powell to Coburn Gilman
Do you want me to bring you an octopus, darling? There are several on hand.
30 May (1947): Truman Capote to Robert Linscott
...today I wrote two pages and oh Bob I do want it to be a beautiful book because it seems important to me that people...
29 May (1957): Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Plath
I took "Stylization," and, I think, wrote a very clever essay ostensibly in praise of style in all its forms as a religious devotee of...
28 May (1940): Albert Camus to Jean Grenier
Albert Camus and Jean Grenier met in 1930; Camus was a student at the University of Algiers, Grenier his philosophy professor. Their student-mentor relationship lasted...
23 May (1914): Ezra Pound To Harriet Monroe
Are the only American poets to be those who are too lazy to study or travel, or too cowardly to learn what perfection means?
22 May (1951): Carl Sandburg to Thomas Hornsby Ferril
...lo and behold it turned out to be Goethe who wrote a book about how foolish it was to be born and scores of German...
21 May (1959): John Steinbeck to Eugène Vinaver
Morgan [le Fay] learned necromancy in a nunnery. What better school for witches—lone, unfulfilled women living together.
20 May (1906): James Joyce to Grant Richards
Almost eight years before the publication of Dubliners, James Joyce was involved in a tense correspondence with Grant Richards, the man who originally agreed to...
17 May (1948): Tennessee Williams to James Laughlin
Always fond of travel and changes of locale, Tennessee Williams writes to James Laughlin from Rome, about his admiration for Van Gogh and his inability...
16 May (1885): Henry James to Violet Paget
In the letter below, Henry James writes to Violet Paget, apologizing fervently for not having written sooner, before offering acerbic feedback on Paget’s novel, Miss Brown—by...
15 May (1933): Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos
Enclosed the bludy grand. Listen this G is off the record. Uncle Gus gave me some stock to use to make the African trip...
14 May (1836): Alexander Pushkin to Natalia Nokolaevna Pushkina
When I listen to the small talk of the local men of letters, I am astonished at how decent they can be in print and...
10 May (1817): Lord Byron to John Murray
The day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined—the ceremony—including the masqued priests—the half-naked executioners—the bandaged criminals—the black Christ & his banner—the scaffold—the...
9 May (1911): George Bernard Shaw to F. C. Whitney
Alterations never do any good. Either persevere and force it on the public as it is, or else scrap it promptly. You cannot really alter...
