‘I Suppose It’s Playing the Game That Counts’
During a tough year in which she lost three friends and her "pep" as a writer, WILLA CATHER unburdened herself to her younger brother. In the end she found a reason to believe.
Take A Letter
Overqualified?
Feeling boxed in and in need of new challenges at age 30, LEONARDO DA VINCI relocated from his native Florence to Milan, and promptly wrote to the Duke of Milan, touting 'certain of my secrets' he felt the Duke would find useful 'in whatever place…
‘A Life Is But a Day and Expresses But a Single Note’
In December 1882 the distinguished psychologist WILLIAM JAMES learned that his father was dying, and immediately penned a beautiful farewell letter to him.
A Tortured Chronicle: Severn Documents Keats’s Last Days
As JOHN KEATS lay dying in 1821, he only companion was JOSEPH SEVERN, who in letters to the Keats circle chronicled the consumptive poet's torturous final days.
‘I Will Imagine You Venus To Night’
To his beloved FANNY BRAWNE JOHN KEATS wrote some of the most torrid and revealing love letters in history, one of which, from 1819, we offer here. Also here: Keats's timeless poem, 'To Autumn.'
Synesius of Cyrene to Hypatia
What little we know about HYPATIA, of ancient Alexandria we know from the letters of her devoted student, SYNESIUS. Also: Hypatia on the moon.
Johnny Cash to Carl Perkins
WORLDWIDE EXCLUSIVE: In a previously unpublished letter written in April 1981, JOHNNY CASH apprises CARL PERKINS of his plans for the two of them plus their Sun llabelmate JERRY LEE LEWIS, to appear in concert together in Germany. Of course, there's much more to it.
H.L. MENCKEN TO WILL DURANT
In 1933, WILL DURANT, author of The Story of Philosophy, asked H.L. MENCKEN, the Sage of Baltimore, to explain what meaning life held for him. Mencken was all too happy to write back.