Elizabeth Welsh
Writers’ Letters
Letters: Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Emily Dickinson corresponded with Atlantic editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson for most of her life. He was hugely supportive of her writing, and she credited him with saving her life (although this has been argued as an exaggeration). Two snippets of Emily’s letters to him: ‘I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, … Continue reading
Letters: Katherine Mansfield to S. S. Koteliansky
In a letter from Katherine Mansfield to Samuel Solomonovich (17th March 1915): ‘…There is a wharf not far from here where the sand barges unload. Do you know the smell of wet sand? Does it make you think of going down to the beach in the evening light after a rainy day and gathering the … Continue reading
The letters of Eudora Welty & William Maxwell
A letter from William Maxwell to Eudora Welty: ‘I go about reading aloud to people, and what I read aloud… is the passage about your being taken as a child to see Mammoth Cave. If I had to choose between it, and Plato’s allegory, I would choose it, though I am fond indeed of the … Continue reading
Rebecca West & the role of editor
Rebecca West, formidable writer, reviewer, editor, journalist and critic that she was, wrote this scathing letter in The Freewoman on 1 August 1912. It simply must be shared: ‘Madam, I once edited a woman’s page (for a week), so I can give people advice as to how to use up odd scraps of macaroni, velveteen and … Continue reading
Letters from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop
Letters from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop: ‘I do think free will is sewn into everything we do; you can’t cross a street, light a cigarette, drop saccharine in your coffee without really doing it. Yet the possible alternatives that life allows us are very few, often there must be none. I’ve never thought there … Continue reading
