Correspondence Archives

High Praise

From a 1992 letter written by John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) to Philip Roth, sent after le Carré read a draft of Roth’s Operation Shylock. The letter is…

Cold as ICE

by Oscar Wilde,

From a letter written in 1897 to the editor of the British newspaper the Daily Chronicle. The letter is included in The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde, published in…

Kiss and Tell

by Marina Tsvetaeva,

From a letter written by Marina Tsvetaeva to Boris Pasternak in 1927. Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) was a poet. The letter was included in the February issue of the PN Review. Translated…

The Elements of Vile

by Mitchel lIvers,

From editorial notes given to Milo Yiannopoulos, a leader of the “alt-right,” by Mitchell Ivers, a vice president at Simon & Schuster, on his manuscript for Dangerous. Last year, Simon…

An Off Pursuit

by Joan Murray,

From a draft of a letter written in 1940 by Joan Murray (1917–42) to W. H. Auden (1907–73). The letter is included in Drafts, Fragments, and Poems, a collection of…

Moral Turpitude

by Stephanie LaCava,

The many transgressions of Carolee Schneemann

The Seven-Year Itch

by Patrick Leigh Fermor,

From a letter written by Patrick Leigh Fermor to Enrica Soma in 1961. Soma was a model and ballerina, and the wife of the director John Huston. Fermor was the…

The General

by Emma Reyes,

By Emma Reyes (1919?2003), a painter, from a letter written in 1969 to Germán Arciniegas, a historian and journalist. The Book of Emma Reyes, a memoir, will be published in…

Silver Linings Daybook

by Arsenii Formakov,

From letters sent by Arsenii Formakov to his family, in Riga. Formakov was a Latvian poet, novelist, and journalist. In 1940, he was arrested for anti-Soviet activities and sentenced to…

The Emigrants

by Friedrich Trump,

From a letter written in 1905 by Friedrich Trump, Donald Trump’s grandfather, to Luitpold, prince regent of Bavaria. Trump had been ordered to leave Bavaria for failing to complete mandatory…

For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Howard Rome,

From a letter written in July 1961 by the psychiatrist Howard Rome, who treated Ernest Hemingway at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, before the writer’s suicide earlier that month. The…

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