Any good recommendations for books in this format..
Any good recommendations for books in this format..
Letters from a stoic - Seneca
Epistles - Horace
We Need to Talk About Kevin
"Dangerous Liaisons" by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
"Persan Letters" by Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu
"Dracula" by Bram Stoker
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley
"Sorrows of Young Werther" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker
"Im Arm der Liebe schliefen wir selig ein…" ("Liebesode" - Otto Erich Hartleben)
New poetry collection available (Kindle and paperback)
The most famous epistolary novel is Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.
I don't think Frankenstein is written in letters.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
@Jackson Richardson - been a long time since I last read it so I had to wikipedia it, and there it says "The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville." Shows that my memory's not that bad, I guess ;-)
"Im Arm der Liebe schliefen wir selig ein…" ("Liebesode" - Otto Erich Hartleben)
New poetry collection available (Kindle and paperback)
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
I read Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos and it was solidly good; I recommend it.
Jean Jacques Rousseau also wrote one called Julie Ou La Nouvelle Heloise (Julie, the New Heloise)
Historian Robert Darnton has argued that Julie "was perhaps the biggest best-seller of the century". Publishers could not print copies fast enough so they rented the book out by the day and even by the hour. According to Darnton, there were at least 70 editions in print before 1800, "probably more than for any other novel in the previous history of publishing." -------- from wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie,_or_the_New_Heloise
The Moonstone --- a detective novel by Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Poor Folk by Dostoevsky
Saul Bellow's Herzog
Pamela or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson
The History of Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson
Last edited by Red Terror; 08-24-2016 at 12:33 PM.
There has never been a single, great revolution in history without civil war. --- Vladimir Lenin
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. --- Vladimir Lenin
Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett was epistolary, but I can't say it was brilliant, although the history was interesting. Brick Road was partly epistolary. The main character receives letters from her sister in Bangladesh. Some books are epistolary but not really, because no one writes letters as long as that. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte was like that.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
I don't think strictly speaking The Woman in White is epistolary, ie written in letters. It is a series of memoirs by different narrators, collected after the events.
Evelina by Fanny Burney is in letters (I haven't read it) as is Jane Austen's early Lady Susan.
I thought Humphrey Clinker was sweet and I'm sorry I'd forgotten it. As I remember, the letters are from a wider range of personalities than in Pamela or Clarissa - for all its length, there are only four significant correspondents in Clarissa - Clarissa, Lovelace and their confidantes.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
Nice recommendations.
I am looking for recommendation which uses the medium/device exceptionally well.
Any new modern ones? What about Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, is it any good?
My favourite Bronte novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. (If you'll allow both letters and journals) Much underrated and (some say) repressed by Charlotte Bronte because of its scandalous themes.
Last edited by prendrelemick; 08-24-2016 at 07:03 AM.
ay up
You may want to try John William's Augustus. It won the National Book Award in the 70s so I guess you could say it's new-ish. The author, who also wrote wrote Butcher's Crossing and Stoner (though not much more than that), has gained an excellent post mortem literary reputation. Here's a link:Originally Posted by genesis_pig
https://www.amazon.com/Augustus-Nove...L2A#nav-subnav
And here's a bit of unsolicited advice: some of the folks above are genuinely recommending books they have read and others are merely listing epistolatory novels they have heard of. Nuff said.
Here are two lists from wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...stolary_novels
There has never been a single, great revolution in history without civil war. --- Vladimir Lenin
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. --- Vladimir Lenin
I think I knew the existence of those pages, looking for exceptional recommendations from members here.
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