The Book of Love: Writers and their Love Letters - Softcover

Davidson, Cathy N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452275946 ISBN 13: 9780452275942

Publisher: Plume, 1996

Synopsis

A Valentine's Day selection of more than one hundred love letters features passionate prose by writers ranging from Sappho to Anne Sexton, Marcus Aurelius to Nelson Algren. Reprint.

About this title

Review:

One hundred astonishing love letters by writers ranging from Sappho to Sexton, Neruda to Nin--these are definitely not your garden- variety sigh-fests. Cathy Davidson has delivered--though not signed or sealed--some extraordinary specimens. See Zelda Sayre's rather odd missive to F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Come Quick--Come Quick to me--I could never do without you if you hated me and were covered with sores like a leper..." or John Steinbeck's jocular letter to Elaine Scott: "Am a widower with 10,000 acres in Arizona and seven cows so if you can milk I will be glad to have you give up that tinsel life of debauchery and sin and come out to God's country where we got purple sage. P.S. Can you bring a little sin and debauchery along?" There's a letter for every mood--Davidson's arrangement covers love's infinite variety, from the act of falling to the fact of fighting. Of course, it's important to take some assertions less seriously than others. Though Henry Miller tells Anais Nin, "You have silenced me," he does carry on for another two pages!

From Publishers Weekly:

Delightful and insightful, this collection explores the many varietes of love letters. Divided into six parts--from "Falling in Love" to "Absence" to "The End of Love"--as well as several subsections, the book includes writers from Sappho to Stendhal, Walt Whitman to Vaclav Havel. While some missives illuminate famous romances, less expected letters also intrigue: Emma Goldman's plea to a married man ("You have opened up the prison gates of my womanhood"), Civil War soldier Sullivan Ballou's pre-battle message to his wife ("Sarah, my love for you is deathless"), nurse Agnes von Kurowsky's rejection of 19-year-old Ernest Hemingway ("Ernie, dear boy") and the imprisoned Nelson Mandela's advice for his distant daughter ("never . . . allow anybody . . . to bully you"). Davidson, a professor of English literature at Duke University, prefaces each letter with informative biographical comments that are often as engrossing as the letters themselves.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0452275946
• ISBN 13: 9780452275942
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320