Letters of Note

Starred review from June 1, 2014

Based on the blog of the same name, this collection of letters is so handsome that it looks like a coffee-table book, but it's more than that. In it, Queen Elizabeth II sends a note to President Dwight Eisenhower reflecting on Mamie and Ike's visit to Balmoral Castle: she appends her recipe for scones. The chairman of the Whitehall Vigilance Committee receives a package with a note from Jack the Ripper accompanied by half a human kidney, pickled in wine: "I fried and ate it was very nise." Gandhi appeals to Hitler as the only one who can avert the impending war. Bank robber Clyde Barrow tells Henry Ford he only drives Fords. Francis Crick alerts his son about DNA. A wife writes to her samurai husband on the eve of battle (he died in the fighting, she committed suicide) and an ex-slave addresses his former master. This treasure trove of fascinating material includes more than 125 letters from both the famous and the unknown dating as far back as 1340 BCE, many reproduced in facsimile. VERDICT A beautiful collection that should appeal to everyone. Start reading it and you're lost.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 13, 2021
Dogs are a writer’s best friend in this charming installment in the Letters of Note series (after Letters of Note: Love). Thirty letters from a wide variety of writers span over 600 years and highlight “our ever-evolving relationship with this magnificent creature.” In 1351, poet Francesco Petrarch wrote to his friend Matteo with a praise-heavy update about Matteo’s dog, which Petrarch had adopted. Patrick Brontë, meanwhile, wrote to his daughter Charlotte in 1853 from the perspective of her dog Flossy: “Trust dogs rather than men,” he urged. E.B. White hilariously responded in 1951 to the ASPCA’s accusation that his dachshund Minnie was unlicensed (“If by ‘harboring’ you mean getting up two or three times every night to pull Minnie’s blanket up over her, I am harboring a dog all right”), Zora Neale Hurston wrote to her literary agent in 1960 detailing a piece she was working on about her dog Spot, and comedian Sue Perkins wrote to her dog Pickle after his death (“First, a confession: I had you killed”). Where the collection shines is in its ability to reveal unexpected information about the correspondents’ lives: “I have always disliked people who talk baby talk to dogs,” John Steinbeck declares. Dog lovers will savor this quirky collection.