There was a time when people communicated through letters— and when it came to expressing their love, the correspondence brimmed with heartwarming, endearing love letters. Sometimes these letters were beginnings of tempestuous, controversial, clandestine love affairs and soon cultivated into relationships that lasted a lifetime, and at other times they were mere feverish rants, the intensity diminishing as soon as it had escalated.
No matter who they were— scholars, kings, queens, writers, painters— they all fell passionately and irrevocably in love, their letters capturing their happiness, longing, insecurity, and even suspicion and distrust.
We bring together a treasure trove of hundred beautiful letters from around the world in our edition. Beginning with Pliny the Younger, the magistrate of Ancient Rome, pining for his wife as he lay awake at night, and ending with Virginia Woolf’ s confession that her lady love’ s mere presence was intoxicating and even ‘ physically stimulating’ , the letters are accompanied by their profound love stories, telling a tale of how their love began, what turmoil it faced, and in some cases, why it ended.