6 November (1837): Charles Baudelaire to Caroline Aupick
Below, a sixteen-year-old Charles Baudelaire writes home to his mother, Caroline Aupick, about his falling ill at school and relocating to the sickbay. Throughout his...
5 November (1913): Ezra Pound to Isabel W. Pound
Below, Ezra Pound writes to his mother, thanking her for his birthday gift (a bit of much needed spending money, it would seem), and...
2 November (1920): John Dos Passos to Rumsey Marvin
I approve highly of your idea of segregating the intellectuals—in large well padded asylums—The only way for them to escape would be for each man...
1 November (1963): William Empson to the New Statesman
I have followed up the chain of scholarly references purporting to prove that the Dark Lady is accused of having gonorrhoea, and it is even...
31 October (1953): Malcolm Lowry to Albert Erskine
Throughout the fall of 1953, Malcolm Lowry sent his editor at Random House, Albert Erskine, a series of increasingly erratic, digressive, peculiar (and playful) letters...
30 October (1912): D. H. Lawrence to Edward Garnett
Below, D. H. Lawrence writes to editor and close friend Edward Garnett (husband of Constance) regarding Paul Morel, a 400-page drama that, by the end of...
29 October (1919): Carl Sandburg to Romain Rolland
In 1919, passions inflamed by the emergence of the U.S.S.R., the French author and Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland sent an appeal to the “intellectual workers...
26 October (1936): Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder first met Gertrude Stein in 1934, when the latter was lecturing in Chicago on the topic of her new work, The Autobiography of...
25 October (1946): Hermann Hesse to Felix Lützkendorf
Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize in 1946; thereafter, he spent the majority of his time letter-writing, estimating that his daily correspondence occupied some 150...
October 24 (1929): Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald
Below, after a night of long drinking, Ernest Hemingway attempts to assuage F. Scott Fitzgerald’s concerns regarding a perceived slight from Gertrude Stein. TO F....
23 October (1955): William S. Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac
Below, William S. Burroughs writes to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac from Tangier, discussing writing, withdrawal, and sexual violence. “Letter A,” referenced in the...
22 October (1965): Dawn Powell to John F. Sherman
Below is the last known letter written by Dawn Powell, who died of colon cancer in St. Luke’s Hospital on November 14, 1965. John F....
19 October (1921): Edna St. Vincent Millay to Arthur Davison Ficke
Edna St. Vincent Millay and Arthur Davison Ficke maintained an epistolary “platonic love affair” over the course of the 1910s, the culmination of which—a single...
18 October (1956): Ted Hughes to Sylvia Plath
You never will understand a poet of the past unless you know thoroughly and can imagine the exact cast of popular temperament. And you only...
17 October 1933: Henry Miller to Anaïs Nin
Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin had an intense friendship and tumultuous love affair centered on their shared passion for writing. Their efforts to establish a...
16 October, 1829: Alexander Pushkin to A. N. Vulf
A. N. Vulf was Alexander Pushkin’s “companion in merrymaking, amorous escapades and carousing. They also used to discuss politics, history and literature together.” Vulf was the...
15 October (1933): Dylan Thomas to Pamela Hansford Johnson
Pamela Hansford Johnson was Dylan Thomas’ first love. Johnson—who would go on to become an accomplished novelist, playwright, poet and critic in her own right—wrote...
12 October (1944): Marianne Moore to W. H. Auden
Dear Mr. Auden, What kindness—that you should have defended not only my repudiated manuscript but my present booklet. I look forward eagerly to this...
11 October (1953): Saul Bellow to Lionel Trilling
In September of 1953, Lionel Trilling published his essay “A Triumph of the Comic View,” a very favorable assessment of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of...
10 October (1936): F. Scott Fitzgerald to C.O. Kalman
In the summer of 1935, F. Scott Fitzgerald traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, and took a room at the Grove Park Inn, a plush residential...
9 October (1920): Virginia Woolf to The New Statesman
In 1920, novelist Arnold Bennett published a collection of essays entitled Our Women, arguing that men were cognitively and creatively superior to women. Bennett’s book,...
8 October (1941): E.E. Cummings to Ezra Pound
Throughout the 1930s and 40s, E.E. Cummings was one of Ezra Pound’s only political confidants. Their correspondence is an unsettling record of their flirtation with,...
5 October (1922): Marcel Proust to Camille Vettard
Below, Marcel Proust shares with writer and critic Camille Vettard some reflections on his method and craft. The letter is dated to “early October, 1922.” ...
4 October (1928): Thomas Wolfe to Aline Bernstein
Below, Thomas Wolfe recounts for Aline Bernstein his (drunken, hapless, violent) experience of Oktoberfest in Munich, which resulted in “a mild concussion of the brain,...
