Epistles, Missives, and Letters – What’s in a name?

 As I continue to delve into the multifaceted genre of stories conveyed by letters, I realized that the three terms, epistle, missive, and letter, describe the same thing, or do they?

There’s a nuance to the terms and how they are used by the author and understood by the reader. I began with definitions found in the OED, where else!

Epistle and its various permutations take up 2-1/2 pages of the OED. The term epistle comes from the Greek, adopted into Latin, and comes directly into Old English. The very first definition is “a communication made to an absent person in writing.” The definitions go on to narrow the use of the term to poetry in letter form and a letter from an apostle in a religious sense (seen often in New Testament and Apocryphal Scripture).

Missive comes from the Latin mittere, to send. Most particularly, missive is a letter or epistle sent from one person to another. The second OED definition states that a missive is “sent by a superior authority, especially the sovereign, to a particular person or body of persons, conveying a commend, recommendation or permission.” While the term can also mean something thrown like a missile, it stays in the category of a formal, short communication. When I think of a missive, I think of those sent on the battlefield or between warring parties.

Letter comes from the Latin littera, as in the letter of the alphabet, shaping letters, and anything written as an epistle, document, or record. The term should not be confused with the term LETTER as in someone who lets or rents a property.

Now that the definitions are differentiated from one another, it’s clear that the use of terms depends upon what nuance the writer wants to imparts to the reader.

It’s time to go on the hunt for more novels of this ilk and to also look for those written as journals and diaries and internal dialogue.

Epistolary and Diary Novels - what variety

 

Epistolary (Letter) and Diary novels come in lots of shapes and sizes. We’ve all encountered this genre of book from The Diary of Anne Frank to Letters from Father Christmas by JRR Tolkien and The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. Some are written as stories only in letter or diary form that unfold through the voice of the writer and receiver. Sometimes the tales are one-sided, some are told from a variety of perspectives or writers.

Philippa Gregory’s newest novel Dark Tides

uses letters to tell of events occurring in the recent past, moving the story forward, filling in backstory, and describing life to relatives who live far away. In this case, sporadic letters are sent between London to New England describing recent events and telling of the death of a son. Letters reveal a little of what life is like in the new colony in the early 1600s. The letters are as descriptive as is the narrative in the book. Best of all, the letters foretell of troubles that will live on to the next generation. I’ve reviewed the book here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3507319738.  

Letters may inform or ask the reader about events in their life, town, or occupation. A lovely example of this type of epistolary novel is 

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16200.Ella_Minnow_Pea. It is a most creative epistolary novel, where the writer lives in a community founded by Nevin Nollop, “author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ “The town’s sign is in disrepair. By governing committee edict, residents are denied the use of any letters missing from the sign. As the book progresses and more letters fall from the sign, the letter writer becomes increasingly creative with her spelling. You’ll be forced to read this book out loud, sounding out each phonetically spelled word.

Another example of letters telling the story is 84 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368916.84. It’s probably the most famous, “go-to” set of letters that revolve around book collecting. It’s the first book I think of when hearing “epistolary” novel. For those of you unacquainted with the title, it’s a series of missives between an American writer and the 84 Charing Cross Road bookshop owner in London before, during, and after WWII. The letters ask for books, then describe the writer’s response to the physical object and the contents and thoughts of the author. The shop owner / bookseller responds in kind, making suggestions of other works. Throughout the book, you get a sense of the book trade, the customer, and events unfolding in Europe (and America). If you aren’t a book reader, the movie with the same title will enchant you.

As I said above, there are many types of epistolary novels. I’ve lumped books written through journal and diary entries. In the case of Anne Frank’s Diary, the story unfolds continuously through her entries as she addresses “Dear Kitty.” In other instances, the use of the journal or diary provides back story or fills in little details that are missing from the main narrative. Many non-fiction writers, particularly historians and journalists may dig through published or unpublished letters and diaries to learn details about a time, place, or event. Many politicians and office holders kept public diaries or journals to document their actions. President Obama, in his newest memoir A Promised Land

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55361205-a-promised-land, laments that he didn’t keep a diary so he had to rely on newspapers, government documents, and memory as he wrote his book. An aide memoire would have helped him immensely.

Why read this type of novel? For a change of pace perhaps, or to enjoy a different writing style. I gave a short talk about the epistolary and diary novels in my personal library. You find a list of the books I discussed in the next entry https://mbkcons2.blogspot.com/2021/01/epistolary-and-diary-novels-list-from.html

 

Epistolary and Diary Novels - a list from my collection

 

Bibliography for talk on epistolary and diary novels

 

84 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff

 Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke’s

Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

Letters from Yellowstone by Diane Smith

Thomas Jefferson’s Travels: selected letters (1784-1789) edited by Anthony Brandt

Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener by Laura Simon

Two Renaissance Book Hunters: Letters between Poggius Bracciolini and Nicolaus De Niccolis, translated with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan.

Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, collected by Leonard S. Marcus

Diary of a Bookseller, and its companion volume Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir by Jennifer Ryan

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce

Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn