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(September 2010)

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of

documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries,
newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes
used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and
radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use. The word
epistolary is derived through Latin from the Greek word
epistol, meaning a letter (see epistle).
The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story,
because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to
demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the
device of an omniscient narrator.
Contents [hide]

Catal

1 Early works

esky

2 Types of epistolary novels

Cymraeg

3 Later works

Dansk

4 In other media

Deutsch

5 See also

Eesti

6 Footnotes

Espaol

7 External links

Franais

Early works

Frysk
Italiano

Nederlands

Norsk (bokml)
Polski
Portugus

Svenska

Titlepage of Aphra Behn's LoveLetters (1684)

[edit]

There are two theories on the genesis of the epistolary novel. The first claims that the genre
originated from novels with inserted letters, in which the portion containing the third person narrative
in between the letters was gradually reduced. [1] The other theory claims that the epistolary novel
arose from miscellanies of letters and poetry: some of the letters were tied together into a (mostly
amorous) plot. [2] Both claims have some validity. The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish "Prison
of Love" (Crcel de amor) (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro, belongs to a tradition of novels in which
a large number of inserted letters already dominated the narrative. Other well-known examples of
early epistolary novels are closely related to the tradition of letter-books and miscellanies of letters.
Within the successive editions of Edm Boursault's Letters of Respect, Gratitude and Love (Lettres
de respect, d'obligation et d 'amour) (1669), a group of letters written to a girl named Babet was
expanded and became more and more distinct from the other letters, until it formed a small epistolary
novel entitled Letters to Babet (Lettres Babet). The immensely famous Letters of a Portuguese Nun
(Lettres portugaises) (1669) generally attributed to Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de

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Trke

Guilleragues, though a small minority still regard Marianna Alcoforado as the author, is claimed to be

intended to be part of a miscellany of Guilleragues prose and poetry.[3] The founder of the epistolary
novel in English is said by many to be James Howell (15941666) with "Familiar Letters", who writes
of prison, foreign adventure, and the love of women.
The first novel to expose the complex play that the genre allows was Aphra Behn's Love-Letters
Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684), which appeared in three successive volumes in 1684,
1685, and 1687. The novel shows the genre's results of changing perspectives: individual points were
presented by the individual characters, and the central voice of the author and moral evaluation
disappeared (at least in the first volume; her further volumes introduced a narrator). Behn furthermore
explored a realm of intrigue with letters that fall into the wrong hands, with faked letters, with letters
withheld by protagonists, and even more complex interaction.
The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in the works of such authors as
Samuel Richardson, with his immensely successful novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749). In
France, there was Lettres persanes (1721) by Montesquieu, followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Hlose
(1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), which used the
epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related
directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers (1774) (The Sorrows of Young Werther) and Friedrich Hlderlin's Hyperion. The first North
American novel, The History of Emily Montague (1769) by Frances Brooke was written in epistolary
form.
Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of
savage burlesques. The most notable example of these was Henry Fielding's Shamela (1741), written
as a parody of Pamela. In it, the female narrator can be found wielding a pen and scribbling her diary
entries under the most dramatic and unlikely of circumstances.
The epistolary novel slowly fell out of use in the late 18th century. Although Jane Austen tried her
hand at the epistolary in juvenile writings and her novella Lady Susan, she abandoned this structure
for her later work. It is thought that her lost novel "First Impressions", which was redrafted to become
Pride and Prejudice, may have been epistolary: Pride and Prejudice contains an unusual number of
letters quoted in full and some play a critical role in the plot.
The epistolary form nonetheless saw continued use, surviving in exceptions or in fragments in
nineteenth-century novels. In Honor de Balzac's novel Letters of Two Brides, two women who
became friends during their education at a convent correspond over a 17 year period, exchanging
letters describing their lives. Mary Shelley employs the epistolary form in her novel Frankenstein
(1818). Shelley uses the letters as one of a variety of framing devices, as the story is presented
through the letters of a sea captain and scientific explorer attempting to reach the north pole who
encounters Victor Frankenstein and records the dying man's narrative and confessions. In the late
19th century, Bram Stoker released one of the most widely recognized and successful novels in the
epistolary form to date, Dracula. Printed in 1897, the novel is compiled entirely of letters, diary
entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams, doctor's notes, ship's logs, and the like, which Stoker adroitly
employs to balance believability and dramatic tension[citation needed] .

Types of epistolary novels

[edit]

There are three types of epistolary novels: monologic (giving the letters of only one character, like
Letters of a Portuguese Nun), dialogic (giving the letters of two characters, like Mme Marie Jeanne
Riccoboni's Letters of Fanni Butlerd (1757), and polylogic (with three or more letter-writing
characters). In addition, a crucial element in polylogic epistolary novels like Clarissa, and Dangerous
Liaisons is the dramatic device of 'discrepant awareness': the simultaneous but separate
correspondences of the heroines and the villains creating dramatic tension.

Later works

[edit]

See also: list of contemporary epistolary novels

Epistolary novels have made several memorable appearances in more recent literature:
Fyodor Dostoevsky used the epistolary format for his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), as a series of
letters between two friends, struggling to cope with their impoverished circumstances and life in
pre-revolution Russia.
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Bront is written in the form of letter from the narrator
to his friend with the main heroine's diary inside it.
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins uses a collection of various documents to construct a
detective novel in English. In the second piece, a character explains that he is writing his portion
because another had observed to him that the events surrounding the disappearance of a certain
moonstone might reflect poorly on the family, if misunderstood, and therefore he was collecting
the true story. This is an unusual element. Most epistolary novels present the documents without
questions about how they were gathered. He also used the form previously in The Woman in
White (1859).
Spanish foreign minister Juan Valera's Pepita Jimenez (1874) is writing in three sections, with the
first and third being a series of letters, while the middle part is a narration by an unknown
observer.
Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs (1912)
Kathrine Taylor's Address Unknown (1938) was an anti-Nazi novel in which the final letter is
returned as "Address Unknown", indicating the disappearance of the German character.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) uses not only letters and diaries, but also dictation cylinders and
newspaper accounts. While the novel draws on the epistolary form, by the end of the story it
reduces it, along with other media, to a monstrous "mass of typewriting".
C. S. Lewis used the epistolary form for The Screwtape Letters (1942), and considered writing a
companion novel from an angel's point of viewthough he never did so. It is less generally
realized that his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964) was a similar exercise, exploring
theological questions through correspondence addressed to a fictional recipient, "Malcolm",
though this work may be considered a "novel" only loosely in that developments in Malcolm's
personal life gradually come to light and impact the discussion.
Theodore Sturgeon's short novel, Some of Your Blood (1961), consists of letters and case-notes
relating to the psychiatric treatment of a non-supernatural vampire.
Saul Bellow's novel Herzog (1964) is largely written in letter format. These are both real and
imagined letters, written by the protagonist Moses E. Herzog to family members, friends and
famous figures.
"The Anderson Tapes" (1969, 1970) by Lawrence Sanders is a novel told primarily in the form of
transcripts of tape recordings.
Stephen King's novel Carrie (1974) is written in an epistolary structure, through newspaper
clippings, magazine articles, letters, and excerpts from books.
"The Fan" (1977) by Bob Randall is a thriller in epistolary form.
In John Barth's epistolary work, Letters (1979), the author interacts with characters from his other
novels.
Alice Walker employed the epistolary form in The Color Purple (1982). The 1985 film adaptation
echoed the form by incorporating into the script some of the novel's letters, which the actors
spoke as monologues.
Avi used this style of constructing a story in Nothing But the Truth (1991), where the plot is told
using only documents, letters, and scripts.
Ronald Munson used an epistolary style in "Fan Mail" (1994), where the entire plot is told using
e-mails, letters, transcripts of television shows and telephone conversations, faxes, and
interactions with a computer program called ELIZA.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) was written by Stephen Chbosky in the form of letters
from an anonymous character to a secret role model of sorts.
Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan (2001) uses letters and journal entries to weave the story of a
middle-aged woman in the 1930s.
The Boy Next Door (2002) by Meg Cabot is a romantic comedy novel dealt with entirely by emails
sent among the characters.

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Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002) by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler uses
letters, documents, and other scripts to construct the plotline.
Several of Gene Wolfe's novels are written in the forms of diaries, letters, or memoirs.
We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003) is a monologic epistolary novel, written as a series of letters
to the narrator's husband Franklin.
In the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly novels, out-of-context text messages, usually humorous, mark
transitions between sections.
Griffin and Sabine by artist Nick Bantock is a love story written as a series of hand painted
postcards and letters.
The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer - 2004
Where Rainbows End (2004) by Cecelia Ahern is written in the form of letters, emails, instant
messages, newspaper articles, etc.
Uncommon Valour (2005) by John Stevens, the story of two naval officers in 1779, is primarily
written in the form of diary and log extracts.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006) by Max Brooks is a series of interviews
from various survivors of a zombie apocalypse.
My Sister's a Pop Star (2006), I'm SO Not a Pop Star (2008), and the third book in the series, My
Life on TV (2010), by American author Kimberly Greene, use blog posts to move the plot along
and introduce key changes in the protagonist's thinking.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie
Barrows is written as a series of letters and telegraphs sent and received by the protagonist.
Punkzilla by Adam Rapp (2009)
Super Sad True Love Story (2010) by Gary Shteyngart
Burley Cross Postbox Theft (2010) by Nicola Barker is a polylogic epistolary novel consisting of a
bundle of 26 undelivered letters stolen from a mailbox in the titular village of Burley Cross.
Midnight Movie (2011) by Tobe Hooper and Alan Goldsher is written as a series of emails,
Tweets, texts, and oral histories.
The children's book Regarding the Fountain by Kate Klise is told through letters and newspaper
clippings.
The Antagonist (2011) by Lynn Coady is a monologic epistolary novel conveyed through
increasingly unanswered email messages.

In other media

[edit]

"Dear Dad", episode twelve of the first season of M*A*S*H, used the framing device of a letter
written by Hawkeye Pierce to his father to describe the events of the episode.
"The Stackhouse Filibuster", episode seventeen of the second season of The West Wing, used
the framing device of emails sent by C.J. Cregg, Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn to their
respective parents to describe the events of the episode.
The Beatles' "P.S. I Love You", Eminem's "Stan", Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" and
Bloodhound Gang's "The Ballad of Chasey Lain" are all examples of epistolary songs.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Marjorie Daw and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper are
two examples of epistolary short stories.

See also

[edit]

Epistolary poem
Novels portal

List of fictional diaries

Footnotes

[edit]

1. ^ E.Th. Voss. Erzhlprobleme des Briefromans, dargestellt an vier Beispielen des 18. Jahrhunderts.

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Bonn, 1960.
2. ^ B.A. Bray. L'art de la lettre amoureuse: des manuels aux romans (1550-1700). La Haye/Paris, 1967
3. ^ G. de Guilleragues. Lettres portugaises, Valentins et autres oeuvres. Paris, 1962

External links

[edit]

BBC Radio 4's "15 March 2007 edition of 'In Our Times"
by Melvyn Bragg.
v

Narrative

Character
Plot

edition on Epistolary Literature. Hosted

[hide]

Antagonist/Archenemy Characterization Deuteragonist False protagonist Focal character

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This page was last modified on 25 February 2012 at 14:32.

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