The letter museum
A small shelf of letters
worth knowing about.
Read one. Sit with it for a moment. Then close the tab.
1862 · From Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough
On the death of a son
A short letter from a president in the middle of a war, written to the daughter of a soldier. Plain, unhurried, kind.
Read it →1903 · From Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus
To a young poet
Ten letters about solitude, doubt, and the long slow work of becoming.
Read it →1933 · From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Scottie
A letter to his daughter
A list of things to worry about, and a longer list of things not to.
Read it →1842 · From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Thomas Carlyle
On the loss of a friend
Writing to a friend across an ocean about the death of his young son. Grief held lightly, in long sentences.
Read it →1861 · From Sullivan Ballou to Sarah Ballou
To his wife, the night before a battle
A Union major writes to his wife a week before he is killed. Among the most-quoted love letters in the English language.
Read it →1876 · From Mark Twain to his nephew Sammy
Advice to a nephew
An uncle, writing plainly about how to behave when no one is watching. Funny in the way only true things are.
Read it →1919 · From Franz Kafka to Hermann Kafka
To his father
A hundred-page letter Kafka wrote, gave to his mother to deliver, and which his father never read. A reminder that some letters are for the writing.
Read it →1973 · From E. B. White to a man who had lost faith in humanity
A thank-you note
A short reply to a stranger's despairing letter. Quiet, exact, hopeful without pretending.
Read it →1958 · From John Steinbeck to Thom Steinbeck
To his daughter, on turning fourteen
On the two kinds of love, written to a son worried he'd fallen into the wrong one.
Read it →1941 · From Virginia Woolf to Leonard Woolf
Last letter from a daughter
A note left before walking into the river. Brief, grateful, unbearable. A reminder of what plain words can carry.
Read it →