We write letters, like our ancestors, for many reasons: love letters, consolation letters, suicide letters. This book reveals letter-writing as a way of doing emotion. Covering human history from the Roman period to our times, we learn about the changing taxonomies and traditions of conveying feelings through written conversation.

Ute Frevert, Professor of History and Director em. at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

This collection will be of major value to scholars and students working across the history of emotions and literature. The essays address an impressive range of examples, from Cicero to Langston Hughes, demonstrating the centrality of emotion to the epistolary genre and the ways in which both change over time. Emotions and the Letter offers genuine new insight into the place of the letter in human culture.

Anne Sophie Refskou, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark