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What a Hazard a Letter Is
The Strange Destiny of the Unsent Letter
Synopsis
Why would anyone write a letter and then not send it?
`What a Hazard a Letter is,' wrote the poet Emily Dickinson, thinking of `the Hearts it has scuttled and sunk'. Once sent, a letter cannot be taken back: it is like a depth charge dropped into the future, into other people's lives. The moment they're written, letters become, as Janet Malcolm puts it, `fossils of feeling': they fix and freeze the sentiments we had at the time, though our lives may quickly move on and we may all too soon have second thoughts.
But what if, once written, a letter is not sent - or never arrives?
What a Hazard a Letter is is the first book to look at the strange phenomenon of the unsent letter. It collects together some of the most
remarkable examples, from fiction and from real life, and explores the fascinating reasons why they came to be unsent, and the consequences - sometimes farcical, sometimes agonisingly poignant, and sometimes actually
changing the course of history.
Here, then, are authors from Ian McEwan to Iris Murdoch, Abraham Lincoln to Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf to Van Gogh: magnificent tirades written in the red mist of rage, delicious to read but all the better for not
being mailed; letters whose non-arrival sets a novel's plot careering down a new track; and tender words of love that never quite got said - all, in their way, a little more eloquent for being unsent.
'A curious, astute and entertaining collection ... utterly original', Sunday Times.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
'A curious, astute and entertaining collection of famous unsent, unreceived (and a few unwritten) letters in history and literature. Some of the most heartbreaking are imaginary... But others still, wild and dashed-off as they might seem, are literature of the highest order... This utterly original compilation takes in Saul Bellow's manic letter-writer Moses Herzog, television's The Young Ones and the wily response of John F Kennedy to a letter from Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis... It's a charming book, witty, original and wise.' Christopher Hart, SUNDAY TIMES; 'A perfect Christmas present', in MAIL ON SUNDAY's YOU Magazine's '5 compelling new reads for cosy autumn evenings'; 'Unsent letters provide essential devices in fiction, as well as being part of the tragedy of life, as Caroline Atkins shows in this gloriously varied collection. Within these fascinating pages jostle Beethoven, John F Kennedy, Van Gogh, Boris Johnson, Oscar Wilde, John Major and more, all putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and then thinking better of it.' Bel Mooney, DAILY MAIL