letter

Written or printed message, chiefly a personal communication. Letters are valuable as reflections of social conditions and of literary and political life. Legally, ownership of a letter (as a document) passes to the recipient, but the copyright remains with the writer.

Outstanding examples include:

Ancient Cicero (Roman), Pliny the Younger (Roman), and St Paul;

Medieval Abelard and Héloïse (12th-century France), the Paston family (15th-century England);

16th century Erasmus (the Netherlands), Luther, Melanchthon (Germany), Spenser, Sidney (England);

17th century Donne, Milton, Cromwell, Dorothy Osborne, Wotton (England); Pascal, Mme de Sévigné (France);

18th century Pope, Walpole, Swift, Mary Wortley Montagu, Chesterfield, Cowper, Gray (England); Bossuet, Voltaire, Rousseau (France);

19th century Emerson, J R Lowell (USA); Byron, Lamb, Keats, Fitzgerald, Stevenson (England); George Sand, Saint-Beuve, Goncourt brothers (France); Schiller, Goethe (Germany); Gottfried Keller (Switzerland);

20th century T E Lawrence, G B Shaw, Ellen Terry, Katherine Mansfield (England); Rilke (Germany).