Love Letters

Love letters were first mentioned in Indian mythology 5000 years ago, in Bhagavatha Purana, book 10, chapter 52. In Ancient Greece, Ovid tried to teach "the tricky construction and reception of the love letter", and formal instructions on how to write a love letter were common until the 1800s, when the Romantics argued that the letters should break away from formality and come straight from the heart.

Technology has changed the way we communicate with those we love when we are apart. Social media and video calls mean that we never have to feel very distant from each other, and because of this, people rarely write letters anymore. But at one time, writing love letters was the best way to express your emotions when you were apart from your loved one.

Below, you will find some excerpts from famous love letters. Read through them and consider if they have anything in common that makes it clear that these are love letters.

From James Joyce to Nora Barnacle

I love you deeply and truly, Nora.
I feel worthy of you now.
There is not a particle of my love that is not yours.
In spite of these things which blacken my mind against you, I think of you always at your best… Nora, I love you.

I cannot live without you. I would like to give you everything that is mine, any knowledge I have (little as it is), any emotions I myself feel or have felt, any likes or dislikes I have, any hopes I have or remorse.

I would like to go through life side by side with you, telling you more and more until we grew to be one being together until the hour should come for us to die.

From Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas

Thanks for your letter. I am overwhelmed by the wings of vulture creditors, and out of sorts, but I am happy in the knowledge that we are friends again, and that our love has passed through the shadow and the light of estrangement and sorrow and come out rose-crowned as of old. Let us always be infinitely dear to each other, as indeed we have been always.

From John Keats to Fanny Brawne

You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as you wish?
My dear Girl I love you ever and ever and without reserve.
The more I have known you the more have I lov’d.
In every way – even my jealousies have been agonies of Love, in the hottest fit I ever had I would have died for you.

I have vex’d you too much. But for Love! Can I help it?
You are always new.
The last of your kisses were ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest: the last movement the gracefullest.

From Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murray

My love for you tonight is so deep and tender that it seems to be outside myself as well. I am fast shut up like a little lake in the embrace of some big mountains, you would see me down below, deep and shining – and quite fathomless, my dear. You might drop your heart into me and you’d never hear it touch the bottom. I love you – I love you – Goodnight. Oh, Bogey, what it is to love like this!

From Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert

I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider… every day you stay away – I miss my biggest heart; my own goes wandering round, and calls for Susie… Susie, forgive me Darling, for every word I say –my heart is full of you… yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me… I shall grow more and more impatient until that dear day comes, for til now, I have only mourned for you; now I begin to hope for you.

From Lucrezia Borgia to Pietro Bembo

I know that the very expectation of something awaited is the greater part of satisfaction because the hope of possessing it inflames desire. The rarer it is, the more beautiful it seems, the commoner, the less so. I decided to put off writing to you until this moment, so for that, by awaiting some exquisite reward to your most exquisite letters, you have become the source of your own satisfaction.

From Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine Bonaparte

I have not spent a day without loving you; I have not spent a night without embracing you; I have not so much as drunk one cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain apart from the moving spirit of my life. In the midst of my duties, whether I am at the head of my army or inspecting the camps, my beloved Josephine stands alone in my heart, occupies my mind, fills my thoughts.

From Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barret Browning

Words can never tell you, however, – form them, transform them anyway, – how perfectly dear you are to me – perfectly dear to my heart and soul. I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence – you have been entirely perfect to me – I would not change one word, one look.

My hope and aim are to preserve this love, not to fall from it – for which I trust to God who procured it for me, and doubtlessly can preserve it.