A Brief History of Great Letters

From Abigail Adams to John Adams (at the beginning of his political career)
March 1776

I wish you would ever write me a Letter half as long as I write you; and tell me if you may where your Fleet are gone? What sort of Defence Virginia can make against our common Enemy? […]
I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs. Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us.
[…] I feel very differently at the approach of spring to what I did a month ago. We knew not then whether we could plant or sow with safety, whether when we had toild we could reap the fruits of our own industery, whether we could rest in our own Cottages, or whether we should not be driven from the sea coasts to seek shelter in the wilderness, but now we feel as if we might sit under our own vine and eat the good of the land.
[…] Tho we felicitate ourselves, we sympathize with those who are trembling least the Lot of Boston should be theirs. But they cannot be in similar circumstances unless pusilanimity and cowardise should take possession of them. They have time and warning given them to see the Evil and shun it.—I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.

From Jane Austen to Frank Austen (her brother; written after the publication of Pride and Prejudice)
July 1813

[…] You will be glad to hear that every Copy of S&S is sold & that it has brought me £140—besides the Copy right, if that sh[ould] ever be of any value.—I have now therefore written myself into £250.—which only makes me long for more.—I have something in hand—which I hope on the credit of P&P will sell well, tho’ not half so entertaining, and by the bye—shall you object to my mentioning the Elephant in it, & two or three others of your old Ships?—I have done it, but it shall not stay, to make you angry.—They are only just mentioned.
[…] God bless you.—I hope you continue beautiful—&brush your hair, but not all off.—We join in an infinity of Love.—Y[ours] very affec[tionately]
Jane Austen

Between Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley
October 1814 (after their secret elopement and during Godwin’s pregnancy—Shelley often left home to avoid creditors)

[…] For what a minute did I see you yesterday—is this the way my beloved that we are to live till the sixth in the morning I look for you and when I awake I turn to look on you—dearest Shelley you are solitary and uncomfortable why cannot I be with you to cheer you and to press you to my heart oh my love you have no friends why then should you be torn from the only one who has affection for you—But I shall see you tonight and that is the hope that I shall live on through the day—be happy dear Shelley and think of me—why do I say this dearest & only one I know how tenderly you love me and how you repine at this absence from me—when shall we be free from fear of treachery? […]
I was so dreadfully tired yesterday that I was obliged to take a coach home forgive this extravagance but I am so very weak at present & I had been so agitated through the day that I was note able to stand a morning rest however will set me quite right again and I shall be quite well when I meet you this evening—will you be at the door of the coffee house at five oclock as it is désagreable to go into those places and I shall be there exactly at the time & we will go into St Pauls where we can sit down […]

December 1816 (after the conception of Frankenstein and after Shelley’s ex-wife died by suicide)

I have spent a day, my beloved, of somewhat agonising sensations, such as the contemplation of vice and folly and hard-heartedness, exceeding all conception, much produce […]
The children I have not yet got. I have seen Longdill, who recommends proceeding with the utmost caution and resoluteness. He seems interested. I told him I was under contract of marriage to you, and he said that, in such an event, all pretence to detain the children would cease. Hunt said very delicately that this would be soothing intelligence to you. Yes, my only hope, my darling love, this will be one among the innumerable benefits which you will have bestowed upon me […]
It seems that this poor woman—the most innocent of her abhorred and unnatural family—was driven from her father’s house, and descended the steps of prostitution until she lived with a groom of the name of Smith; who deserting her, she killed herself. There can be no question that the beastly viper her sister, unable to gain profit from her connection with me, has secured herself the fortune of the old man—who is now dying—by the murder of this poor creature. Everything tends to prove, however, that beyond the mere shock of so hideous a catastrophe having fallen on a human being once so nearly connected with me, there would, in any case, have been little to regret. Hookham, Longdill, every one, does me full justice; hears testimony to the upright spirit and liberality of my conduct to her […]

From John Keats to Fanny Brawne (before their engagement)
July 1819

My sweet Girl,
I hope you did not blame me much for not obeying your request of a Letter on Saturday: we have had four in our small room playing at cards night and morning leaving me no undisturbed opportunity to write […] I have, believe me, not been an age in letting you take possession of me; the very first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal; but burnt the Letter as the very next time I saw you I thought you manifested some dislike to me. If you should ever feel for Man at the first sight what I did for you, i am lost. Yet I should not quarrel with you, but hate myself […] You say speaking of Mr Severn ‘but you must be satisfied in knowing that I admired you much more than your friend’. My dear love, I cannot believe there ever was or ever could be any thing to admire in me especially as far as sight goes […]
I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it […] I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen […]

From Edgar Allan Poe to John Augustus Shea (his editor; written after the first publication of “The Raven”)
February 1845

Dear Shea,
Lest I should have made some mistake in the hurry I transcribe the whole alteration.
Instead of the whole stanza commencing “Wondering at the stillness broken &c—substitute this.
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless”, said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore,
‘Nevermore—ah, nevermore!’”
At the close of the stanza preceding this, instead of “Quoth the raven Nevermore”, substitute Then the bird said “Nevermore”.
Truly yours,
Poe

Between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (before they met and were married)
February 1845

[…] I write this to you to show how I can have pleasure in letters, & never think them too long, nor too frequent, nor too illegible […] I can read any m.s. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will only promise to treat me ‘en bon camarade’, without reference to the conventionalities of ‘ladies & gentlemen’ […] taking no thought for your sentences, (nor for mine)—nor for your blots, (nor for mine) nor for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling, (nor for mine)—and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you are in the mind for it, & with as little ceremony & less legibility than you wd think it necessary to employ towards your printer—why then, I am ready to sign & seal the contract, & to rejoice in being ‘articled’ as your correspondent. Only dont let us have any constraint, any ceremony! Dont be civil to me when you feel rude,—nor loquacious, when you incline to silence,—nor yielding in the manners, when you are perverse in the mind […] You will find me an honest man on the whole, if rather hasty & prejudging […] which is a different thing from prejudice at the worst. And we have great sympathies in common, & I am inclined to look up to you in many things, & to learn as much of everything as you will teach me. On the other hand you must prepare yourself to forbear & to forgive—will you? […]

March 1845

Dear Miss Barrett—I seem to find of a sudden—surely I knew before—anyhow, I do find now, that with the octaves on octaves of quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life’s harp with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this morning: ‘just escaping’ &c […] See now: this sad feeling is so strange to me, that I must write it out, must […] I have been ‘spoiled’ in this world—to such an extent, indeed, that I often reason out—make clear to myself—that I might very properly, so far as myself am concerned, take any step that would peril the whole of my future happiness—because the past is gained, secure, and on record; and, tho’ not another of the old days should dawn on me, I shall not have lost my life, no! […] How strangely this connects itself in my mind with another subject in your note! I looked at that translation for a minute, not longer, years ago, knowing nothing about it or you […] but the original makes Prometheus (telling over his bestowments towards human happiness,) say […] that he stopped mortals μη προδερκεσθαι μορον [from foreseeing their doom]—το ποιον ευρων, asks the Chorus, τησδε φαρμακον νοσου [what cure did you discover for this affliction]? Whereto he replies, τυφλας εν αυτοις ελπιδας κατωκισα [I planted blind hopefulness firmly in their hearts] (what you hear men dissertate upon by the hour, as proving the immortality of the soul apart from revelation, undying yearnings, restless longings, instinctive desires which, unless to be eventually indulged, it were cruel to plant in us, &c. &c.) […]
Yours ever,
R.B.

From Charlotte Brontë to W.S. Williams (the literary editor at Smith Elder publishers; written after the death of Brontë’s younger sister, Emily)
December 1848

My dear sir
I will write to you more at length when my heart can find a little rest—now I can only thank you very briefly for your letter which seemed to me eloquent in its sincerity.
Emily is nowhere here now, her wasted remains are taken out of the house. We have laid her cherished head under the church aisle beside my mother’s, my two sisters’—dead long ago—and my poor, hapless brother’s. But a small remnant of the race is left—so my poor father thinks.
Well—the loss is ours, not hers, and some sad comfort I take, as I hear the wind blow and feel the cutting keenness of the frost, in knowing that the elements bring her no more suffering; their severity cannot reach her grave; her fever is quieted, her restlessness soothed, her deep, hollow cough is hushed for ever; we do not hear it in the night nor listen for it in the morning; we have not the conflict of the strangely strong spirit and the fragile frame before us—relentless conflict—once seen, never to be forgotten. A dreary calm reigns round us, in the midst of which we seek resignation.
My father and my sister Anne are far from well. As for me, God has hitherto most graciously sustained me; so far I have felt adequate to bear my own burden and even to offer a little help to others. I am not ill—I can get through daily duties, and do something towards keeping hope and energy alive in our morning household. My father says to me almost hourly, “Charlotte, you must bear up, I shall sink if you fail me”; these words, you can conceive, are a stimulus to nature. The sight, too, of my sister Anne’s very still but deep sorrow wakens in me such fear for her that I dare not falter. Somebody must cheer the rest.
So I will not now ask why Emily was torn from us in the fullness of our attachment, rooted in the prime of her own days, in the promise of her powers; why her existence now lies like a field of green corn trodden down, like a tree in full bearing struck at the root. I will only say, sweet is rest after labour and calm after tempest, and repeat again and again that Emily knows that now.
Yours sincerely,
C. Brontë

From Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (an author, abolitionist, and women’s rights campaigner Dickinson admired, who collected and published the first volume of her poetry after her death)
April 1862

Mr Higginson,
Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive? The Mind is so near itself—it cannot see, distinctly—and I have none to ask.
Should you think it breathed—and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude.
If I make the mistake—that you dared to tell me—would give me sincerer honor—toward you.
I enclose my name—asking you, if you please—Sir—to tell me what is true?
That you will not betray me—it is needless to ask—since Honor is it’s own pawn—.
I’ll tell you how the sun rose—
A ribbon at a time—
The Steeples swam in Amethyst—
The news, like Squirrels, ran—
The Hills untied their Bonnets—
The Bobolinks—begun—
Then I said softly to myself—
“That must have been the Sun”!
But how he set—I know not—
There seemed a purple stile
Which little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while—
Till when they reached the other side—
A Dominie in Gray—
Put gently up the evening Bars—
And led the flock away—

From Victor Hugo to Alphonse de Lamartine (a French poet, historian, and statesman)
June 1862

My illustrious friend,
If being radical is the ideal, yes I am radical. Yes, from all points of view, I understand, I want and I call for more; more, although denounced by the proverb, is not less. Yes, a society which accepts poverty, yes, a religion which accepts hell, yes a humanity which accepts war, seems to me to be a society, a religion and a humanity which is inferior, and what I am seeking is a higher society, a higher humanity and a higher religion; a society without a king, a humanity without borders, a religion without a book. Yes I fight the priest who sells lies and the judge who delivers injustice. Universalizing property, which is the opposite of abolishing it, by eliminating parasitism, namely, for this purpose putting an end to: all owners and masters, that for me is the true social and political economy. I’ll come to the point and summarize. Yes, as long as man is permitted to wish, I wish to eradicate human adversity; I condemn slavery, I seek to drive out poverty, I inform ignorance, I treat illness, I light up the night, I hate hatred. You most likely didn’t bring the book back with you when you returned to us, and lived magnificently, untiringly leading the struggle, so I thought I’d like to replace the ‘imprisoned copy’.
This is what I am, and that is why I wrote Les Misérables.
In my way of thinking, Les Misérables is nothing more than a book based on fraternity, with progress as its pinnacle […]
Now judge me. Literary competition between men of letters is ridiculous, but political and social debate between poets, that’s to say between philosophers, is serious and fruitful. You obviously want what I want, for the most part at least; you just perhaps wish for a gentler slope […]
Dear Lamartine, a long time ago, in 1820, my first stuttering adolescent poetry was a cry of enthusiasm in the light of your dazzling dawn rising on the world […] Make what you will of my book at me. Nothing can come out of your hands but light.
Your Old friend Victor Hugo

From George Eliot (AKA Marian Lewes, née Evans) to Emilia Francis Pattison (an English literary critic)
September 1870

My dear Mrs. Pattison
I have abstained a long while from troubling you with any report of ourselves or any inquiries about you, from an impression that you prefer being left uninterrupted by such small claims on your attention. But the painful, too engrossing thoughts raised by the War urge me to counter-acting thoughts of all friendly bonds. It seems to me more than ever that in all our affectionate relations we have some of the moral treasure of the world under our charge. And thus the impulse to write to you & ask for a little news of you has become at last stronger than any diffidence […]
Probably, like us, you spend a good deal of the day in reading the papers & discussing events contained in the telegrams & correspondence. I read through two daily papers, the Times & the Daily News— an excess in journal-reading that I was never drawn into before.
Very shortly after we parted from you we began wandering again, first into northern counties & then into souther, in search of health for my husband. At last we have won some of that good, & we are settled here with the hope of being able to enjoy our home corners for a long while. Perhaps I should be consulting only my own pleasure if I wished that you should not be equally stationary, but should find occasion to come to London […] I am always affectionately yours
M E Lewes

From Mark Twain to Walt Whitman
May 1889

To Walt Whitman:
You have lived just the seventy years which are the greatest in the world’s history & richest in benefit and advancement to its peoples. These seventy years have done much more to widen the interval between man & the other animals than was accomplished by any five centuries which preceded them.
What great births you have witnessed! The steam press, the steamship, the steel ship, the railroad, the perfected cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the photograph, photo-gravure, the electrotype, the gaslight, the electric light, the sewing machine […] And you have seen even greater births than these; for you have seen the application of anaesthesia to surgery-practice, whereby the ancient dominion of pain, which began with the first created life, came to an end in the earth forever; you have seen the slave set free, you have seen monarchy banished from France, and reduced in England to a machine which makes an imposing show of diligence & attention to business, but isn’t connected with the works. Yes, you have indeed seen much—but tarry here a while, for the greatest is yet to come. Wait thirty years, & then look out over the earth! You shall see marvels upon marvels added to these whose nativity you have witnessed & conspicuous above them you shall see their formidable Result—Man at almost his full stature at last! […]

From Joseph Conrad to Norman Douglas (who shared his manuscripts with the author when they met on the island of Capri)
October 1905

My dear long suffering Douglass.
You must have thought me a conscienceless brute. Alas! I have been an overworked one. I may safely add that I haven’t had more than 3 weeks of decent health in the whole time since I left Capri […]
I am afraid you are bitterly disappointed at the slowness in placing your articles. My dear Douglass believe me that all that could be done has been done and is being done. The first campaign failed but I am going to open the second when we go to London for a week end Nov […] I don’t see what good it would do you to get the stuff back. I have talked of it in many placed—and if suddenly anybody were to ask for it I would not like to have to say I hadn’t got it […]
Don’t forget my dear fellow that your point of view in general is the unpopular one. It is intellectual and uncompromising. This does not make things easier. People don’t want intelligence. It worries them—and they demand from their writers as much subserviency as from their footmen if not rather more.
I trust you are not angry with me. I have had a deucedly hard time of it lately. I am just just keeping my head above water.
Good bye for the present. I’ll write again soon. Kindest regards from my wife. Always yours
J[ose]ph Conrad.

From Franz Kafka to Hermann Kafka (his father, who never received the letter)
1919

Dearest Father,
Recently you asked me why I maintain that I’m afraid of you. And, as usual, I didn’t know how to answer, in part because of my fear of you; and in part because my fear rests on so many details that I couldn’t even have discussed half of it. And if I attempt to give you an answer in writing, it will still be far from complete: because I’m still hindered by my fear, and all that flows from it; and because there is far too much for my mind to remember and consider.
You have always put the matter extremely simply […] It appears thus to you perhaps: you have worked hard all your life, and for the sake of your children, above all for me, you have sacrificed everything; and I have lived the high life, with complete freedom to study what I wanted, and with no cares about food—and so for you, no cares at all—and for this you have never demanded gratitude […] but you expect some recognition, some sign of sympathy; instead of which I have always crawled away from you, to my room, to books, to mad friends, to extreme ideas […] And if you were to sum up your judgment it would come to this; you have no accused me of being evil or indecent (except possibly with regard to the last woman I wanted to marry) but cold, remote, ungrateful. And more than this: it is all my fault; I am guilty […] and, by the same token, you are innocent—except that you have been too good to me […]
There is just a single incident I can remember from these early years […] Once I whimpered long in the night for water: not from thirst, but probably in part to anger you, and in part to entertain myself. After threats had failed to help, you took me out of my bed, carried me to the courtyard balcony and left me there alone in my shirt for a little while outside the closed door. I won’t say that you were wrong; perhaps that was the only way to get some peace in the night; but I will say that it characterized your education methods and their effects on me […]

From Marina Tsvetaeva to Nikolai Tikhonov (a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War)
July 1935

Dear Tikhonov,
I’m terribly sorry that I couldn’t say goodbye to you. Our short meeting left me with a wonderful feeling. I have already written to Boris: it seemed to me that you were coming towards me— like a bridge, and—just like a bridge—making me walk in that direction. (Any other direction—no. That’s what a bridge does.)
What this land is for you—for your heart and your strength—I believe and see. You yourself are this land […] You yourself are that bridge, not those bridges that are being built everywhere these days. You see—starting with a metaphorical bridge, I ended up—with a real one, and I’m glad, as I am about everything that is really itself.
You and me—we will see each other […]
How about me—then (you, apart from anything else, were not there—then there would be no tears)—weeping. ‘Why are you crying?’ ‘I’m not crying, it’s the eyes that are crying’—If I’m not crying now, it’s because I decided absolutely to refrain from hysteria and neurasthenia. (I was so surprised that I immediately stopped crying)—You will love the collective farms!
—In response to my tears—‘Collective farms!’ […]
And I cried because Boris, the best lyric poet of our time, betrayed the Lyric before my eyes, calling himself and everything in himself diseased. Let’s call it ‘loftiness’, but that’s not what he said. He also didn’t say that this disease is dearer to him than health itself […]
I’d love to hear from you, but if you don’t want to write or cannot, I will understand that too.
M.T.

From Amelia Earhart to President Roosevelt (after her successful solo flight across the Pacific)
November 1936

Dear Mr. President:
Some time ago I told you and Mrs. Roosevelt a little about my confidential plans for a world flight. As perhaps you know, through the cooperation of Purdue University I now have a magnificent twin-motor, all-metal plane, especially equipped for long distance flying.
For some months Mr Putnam and I have been preparing for a flight which I hope to attempt probably in March. The route, compared with previous flights, will be unique. It is east to west, and approximates the equator. Roughly it is from San Francisco to Honolulu; from Honolulu to Tokio—or Honolulu to Brisbane; the regular Australia-England route as far west as Karachi; from Karachi to Aden; Aden via Kartoon across Central Africa to Dakar; Dakar to Natal, and thence to New York on the regular Pan American route.
[…] The chief problem is the jump westward from Honolulu. The distance thence to Tokio is 3900 miles. I want to reduce as much as possible the hazard of the take-off at Honolulu with the excessive over-load. With that in view, I am discussing with the Navy a possible refuelling in the air over Midway Island. If this can be arranged, I need to take much less gas from Honolulu, and with the Midway refuelling will have ample gasoline to reach Tokio. As mine is a land plane, the seaplane facilities at Wake, Guam etc. are useless.
[…] In the past the Navy has been so progressive in its pioneering, and so broad-minded in what we might call its “public relations”, that I think a project such as this (even involving a mere woman!) may appeal to Navy personnel. Its successful attainment might, I think, win for the Service further popular friendship.
I should add the matter of international permissions etc. is being handled very helpfully by the State Department. The flight, by the way, has no commercial implications. The operation of my “flying laboratory” is under the auspices of Purdue University. Like previous flight, I am undertaking this one solely because I want to, and because I feel that women now and then have to do things to show what women can do. […]

From Virginia Woolf to George Bernard Shaw (an Irish playwright; written less than a year before her death)
May 1940

Dear Mr Shaw,
Your letter reduced me to two days silence from sheer pleasure. You wont be surprised to hear that I promptly lifted some paragraphs and inserted them in my proofs. You may take what action you like.
As for the falling in love, it was not, let me confess, one-sided. When I first met you at the Webbs I was set against all great men, having been liberally fed on them in my father’s house. I wanted only to meet business men— and (say) racing experts. But in a jiffy you made me re-consider all that and had me at your feet. Indeed you may have acted a lover’s part in my life for the past thirty years; and though daresay its not much to boast of, I should have been a worser woman without Bernard Shaw. That is the reason—I mean the multiplicity of your lovers and what you must suffer from them—why Leonard and Virginia have never liked to impose themselves upon you. But we have an intermittent perch—37 Micklenburgh Square—in London; and if ever Mr Shaw dropped his handkerchief—to recur to the love theme—we should ask nothing better than to come and see you.
As for the Roger Fry picture, I should accept it gratefully. For that offer, and for your letter, and for everything else that you have given me, I am always yours humbly and gratefully,
Virginia Woolf
Heartbreak House, by the way, is my favourite of all your works.

From Jack Kerouac to Marlon Brando (who kept the letter but never replied or produced the movie)
1957

Dear Marlon
I’m praying that you’ll buy ON THE ROAD and make a movie of it. Don’t worry about structure, I know how to compress and re-arrange the plot a bit to give perfectly acceptable movie-type structure: making it into one all-inclusive trip instead of the several voyages coast-to-coast in the book, one vast round trip from New York to Denver to Frisco to Mexico to New Orleans to New York again. I visualize the beautiful shots could be made with the camera on the front seat of the car showing the road (day and night) unwinding into the windshield, as Sal and Dean yak. I wanted you to play the part because Dean (as you know) is no dopey hotrodder but a real intelligent (in fact Jesuit) Irishman. You play Dean and I’ll play Sal (Warner Bros. mentioned I play Sal) […]
What I wanta do is re-do the theater and the cinema in America, give it a spontaneous dash, remove pre-conceptions of ‘situation’ and let people rave on as they do in real life. That’s what the play is: no plot in particular, no ‘meaning’ in particular, just the way people are. Everything I write I do in the spirit where I imagine myself as Angel returned to the earth seeing it with sad eyes as it is. I know you approve of these ideas […]
If you really want to go ahead, make arrangements to see me in New York when next your come, or if you’re going to Florida here I am, but what we should do is talk about this because I prophesy that it’s going to be the beginning of something real great. I’m bored nowadays and I’m looking around for something to do in the void, anyway—writing novels is getting too easy, same with plays, I wrote the play in 24 hours.
Come on now, Marlon, put up your dukes and write!
Sincerely, later, Jack Kerouac

From Nina Simone to Langston Hughes
July 1966

Dear Langston—
I’ve owed you this letter for some time now—so I’m finally doing it.
Thank you—thank you for the books (your autobiographies) you gave us—I’m reading “The Big Sea”, right now and it gives me such pleasure—you have no idea! It is so funny—I read chapters over & over again—’cause certain ones paint complete pictures for me and I get completely absorbed!
Then too, If I’m in a negative mood and want to get more negative (about the racial problem, I mean) if I want to get downright mean and violent I go straight to this book and there is also material for that. Amazing—I use the book—what I mean is I underline all meaningful sentences to me—I make comments in pencil about certain paragraphs etc. And as I said there is a wealth of knowledge concerning the negro problem, especially if one wants to trace the many many areas that we’ve had it rough in all these years—sometimes when I’m with white “liberals” who want to know why we’re so bitter—I forget (I don’t forget—I just get tongue-tied) how complete has been the white race’s rejection of us all these years and then when this happens I go get your book. I’m looking forward to using it more & more in this way as times go on.
[…] I know one thing—I’ve always admired you and been proud of you—respected you and felt honored to know you—but brother, you got a fan now! I’m going out and buy every book you’ve written—I had no idea I could enjoy you so. You see, reading isn’t easy for me—but “The Big Sea” is so varied and so simply written that I don’t have to force myself to concentrate—It grips my imagination immediately plus everything in it I identify with, even your going to sea and I’ve never been to sea—[…]

From Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Emanuel Celler (a former United States Representative, written more than twenty years before her nomination to the Supreme Court)
April 1971

Dear Congressman Celler:
I wish to urge your support and cooperation in expediting passage of the Equal Right Amendment (H.J. Res. 208).
In this critical area of human rights it is regrettable that the United States has delayed assertion of a pace-setting role. Reporting on developments in his country, Sweden’s Prime Minister stated during his stay in Washington last year:
“Public opinion is nowadays so well informed that if a politician today should declare that women ought to have a different role than men [in economic and social life] he would be regarded to be of the stone age.”
He emphasized that equal rights entailed emancipation of the man as much as the women. […]
Although the Women’s Equality Act of 1971 is a desirable supplement, it is not a substitute for the statement of basic rights represented by the Equal Right Amendment.
I very much hope that you will do all that you can to assure that in this nation every person will be given equal opportunity to develop his or her individual talents. Application of this fundamental principle to women is long overdue.
Sincerely,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Professor of Law

How to Write Your Own Great Letter

Advice for Letter-Writing Occasions

Thank You: Avoid the stiff, formulaic, “Thank you for…” and make it about the recipient instead. Explain why the gift was thoughtful, how you are using it, or what exactly it meant to you. Sprinkle in gratitude, make sure an explicit “thank you” still slips in, and share a personal anecdote to drive home your genuine connection.

Romance: Love letters are all about honesty and vulnerability. You don’t have to be a poet—just describe your feelings and open up about what they have done for you—and the rest will fall into place.

Birthday: Don’t overdo it, especially when you don’t know how your recipient is celebrating. Instead, focus on them, their special day, and the year ahead of them.

Graduation: Recognize the graduate’s achievements and pile on the praise—young adults finding their way in the world will need all the well wishes and encouragement they can get!

Engagements: Avoid making engagement congratulations about one person (even if you know them better than their betrothed) and instead acknowledge the strengths of the couple. Share your confidence in their dedication to each other and your excitement about their future.

Birth: Mementos from the very beginnings of creating a family will become lifetime keepsakes, and congratulatory correspondence is part of that! Avoid references to challenges or details of conception and skip ahead to the future—how delighted you are to welcome their child and how much love they will receive.

Holidays: Holidays are the main driver of letter writing today, which means they’re both easier and harder to write—easier because premade greeting cards are available everywhere (and maybe we’re biased, but Bas Bleu’s are some of the best), but harder when you’re trying to be especially creative. Keep holiday cards simple and light, and be mindful of those that may celebrate different holidays than you!

Sympathy: Avoid fixating on details of tough times and offer your support instead. No one wants advice when they’re grieving—just remind them you’re thinking of them, you’re sorry, and you’re there if they need you.

Cover Letters: Proofread, proofread, proofread! Ask someone else to proofread! Watch for proper grammar and spelling, check specific details like company or HR manager names, and sprinkle in confidence by using personal pronouns and concise statements (“I would be a good fit for this position because…”).

Recommendation Letters: If you’ve been asked to write a recommendation letter for someone sending out job or college applications, it can be difficult to know what details to include. Tailor your letter to the audience (e.g., take an academic tone for a college recommendation), provide key details about the individual that hold significance to the organization you’re writing to, and be honest without being overly gushy.

General Correspondence: Letters to close friends and family should carry more meaning and affection that a quick email or text. Share your life, ask questions about theirs, and keep your tone casual—your loved ones aren’t expecting formality, they just want to hear about you!

Sign-offs and Salutations

Counting the days till we meet again
Onwards and upwards
With appreciation
With a full heart
With gratitude
Respectfully
Best regards
Best wishes
Your friend
All my best
I love you!
With love
Take care
Cordially
Sincerely
As ever
Always
Yours
Truly
xoxo