Young Werther's love interest hands over the fatal instrument for his suicide, the climax ofGoethe'sSorrows of Young Werther
Anepistolary novel (/ɪˈpɪstəlɛri/) is anovel written as a series ofletters between the fictional characters of a narrative.[1] The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse other kinds offictional document with the letters, most commonlydiary entries andnewspaper clippings, and sometimes considered to include novels composed of documents even if they do not include letters at all.[2][3] More recently, epistolaries may include electronic documents such as recordings and radio,blog posts, ande-mails. The wordepistolary is derived fromLatin from theGreek wordepistolē (ἐπιστολή), meaning a letter(seeepistle). This type offiction is also sometimes known by theGerman termBriefroman or more generally asepistolary fiction.
The epistolary form can be seen as adding greaterrealism to a story, due to the text existingdiegetically within the lives of the characters. It is in particular able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of anomniscient narrator. An important strategic device in the epistolary novel for creating the impression of authenticity of the letters is the fictional editor.[4]
Ancient Greek and Roman literature supplied the model for storytelling by letters. While these ancient works are not novels in the modern sense, they established key techniques that became foundational for later epistolary fiction. Greek and Roman authors demonstrated how fictional letters could sustain narrative, present multiple perspectives, and incorporate the material aspects of writing and delivery into storytelling.[5][6]
Greek authors embedded letters inside narrative histories, tragedies, and prose romances, and they also produced self-contained collections of fictional letters. Modern scholarship describes a "wealth of Greek antecedents" for later epistolary novels that range from embedded missives in theGreek novels to entire story cycles written only as letters.[7][5][6]
Letters are central to plot construction across the survivingGreek prose romances, where intercepts, misdeliveries, and copied messages catalyze reversals and reveal private motives. This epistolary scaffolding is systematic enough to be treated as anarratological feature of the genre.[8] Alongside embedded letters,Imperial-period writers cultivated fictional letter collections that create miniature social worlds. The most influential are attributed toAlciphron,Aelian, andPhilostratus, preserved in a standardLoeb Classical Library edition. These collections adopt the voices of fishermen, farmers, parasites,courtesans, and elite lovers, presenting vignette-like "miniatures" that dramatize desire, deception, and social pose through the letter form.[9][7]
A key Greek example is the anonymousLetters of Chion of Heraclea, an epistolarynovella that narrates aphilosopher's education and his conspiracy against thetyrantClearchus entirely through seventeen letters. Recent analysis calls the work a "historical epistolary novel" and emphasizes its "continuous narrative" achieved throughfirst-person correspondence. However, the date is debated with a second-century CE composition often preferred, while some argue for a laterlate-antique setting.[10][11][7]
Latin literature also offered powerful epistolary models.Ovid'sHeroides presents mythic heroines speaking in first-person verse letters to absent lovers. Ancient readers knew the collection as letters, and Ovid himself advertises the experiment inArs Amatoria 3.345–346. Modern studies treat theHeroides as a sustained epistolary fiction that explores voice, desire, and addressivity.[12][13]Late antique Latin romance likewise integrates letters into plot architecture. The widely transmittedHistoria Apollonii regis Tyri shows how epistolary exchange could move a prose narrative forward in Latin as well as Greek.[14][15]
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.[16] The other theory claims that the epistolary novel arose frommiscellanies of letters and poetry: some of the letters were tied together into a (mostly amorous) plot.[17] There is evidence to support both claims. The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish "Prison of Love" (Cárcel de amor) (c. 1485) byDiego 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 ofEdmé Boursault'sLetters of Respect, Gratitude and Love (Lettres de respect, d'obligation et d'amour) (1669), a group of letters written to a girl named Babet were expanded and became more and more distinct from the other letters, until it formed a small epistolary novel entitledLetters to Babet (Lettres à Babet). The immensely famousLetters of a Portuguese Nun (Lettres portugaises) (1669) generally attributed toGabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues, though a small minority still regardMarianna Alcoforado as the author, is claimed to be intended to be part of a miscellany of Guilleragues prose and poetry.[18] The founder of the epistolary novel in English is said by many to beJames Howell (1594–1666) with"Familiar Letters" (1645–50), who writes of prison, foreign adventure, and the love of women.
It has been argued that the first work to fully utilize the potential of an epistolary novel may have beenLove-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. This work was published anonymously in three volumes (1684, 1685, and 1687), and has been attributed toAphra Behn though its authorship remains disputed in the 21st century.[19] 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; further volumes introduced a narrator). The author furthermore explored a realm of intrigue with complex scenarios such as letters that fall into the wrong hands, faked letters, or letters withheld by protagonists.
Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savageburlesques. The most notable example of these wasHenry Fielding'sShamela (1741), written as a parody ofPamela. In it, the female narrator can be found wielding a pen and scribbling her diary entries under the most dramatic and unlikely of circumstances.Oliver Goldsmith used the form to satirical effect inThe Citizen of the World, subtitled "Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London to his Friends in the East" (1760–61). So did the diaristFanny Burney in a successful comic first novel,Evelina (1788).
The epistolary novel slowly became less popular after the 18th century. AlthoughJane Austen tried the epistolary in juvenile writings and hernovellaLady Susan (1794), she abandoned this structure for her later work. It is thought that her lost novelFirst Impressions, which was redrafted to becomePride 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. InHonoré de Balzac's novelLetters 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 novelFrankenstein (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. Published in 1848,Anne Brontë's novelThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall is framed as a retrospective letter from one of the main heroes to his friend and brother-in-law with the diary of the eponymous tenant inside it. 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.
Epistolary novels can be categorized based on the number of people whose letters are included. This gives three types of epistolary novels: monophonic (giving the letters of only one character, likeLetters of a Portuguese Nun andThe Sorrows of Young Werther), dialogic (giving the letters of two characters, like MmeMarie Jeanne Riccoboni'sLetters of Fanni Butler (1757), and polyphonic (with three or more letter-writing characters, such as in Bram Stoker'sDracula).
A crucial element in polyphonic epistolary novels likeClarissa andDangerous Liaisons is the dramatic device of 'discrepant awareness': the simultaneous but separate correspondences of the heroines and the villains creating dramatic tension. They can also be classified according to their type and quantity of use of non-letter documents, though this has obvious correlations with the number of voices – for example, newspaper clippings are unlikely to feature heavily in a monophonic epistolary and considerably more likely in a polyphonic one.[22]
Les Liaisons dangereuses is a 1782 French novel byPierre Choderlos de Laclos, about theMarquise de Merteuil and theVicomte de Valmont, twonarcissistic rivals (and ex-lovers) who use seduction as a weapon to socially control and exploit others, all the while enjoying their cruel games and boasting about their talent for manipulation (also seen as depicting the corruption and depravity of theFrench nobility shortly before theFrench Revolution). The book is composed entirely of letters written by the various characters to each other.
Cartas marruecas (Moroccan Letters), a 1789 novel byJosé Cadalso, Spanish author, poet, playwright and essayist.
Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein (1818) uses a frame story written in the form of letters, with the main narrative being told as a first person account by the titular character.[23][24]
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 Imperial-era Russia.
The Moonstone (1868) byWilkie 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 the eponymous diamond might reflect poorly on the family, if misunderstood, and therefore he was collecting the true story. This is an unusual element, as most epistolary novels present the documents without questions about how they were gathered. He also used the form previously inThe Woman in White (1859).
Spanish foreign ministerJuan Valera'sPepita Jiménez (1874) is written in three sections, the first and third being a series of letters, the middle part narrated by an unknown observer.
Kathrine Taylor'sAddress Unknown (1938) is an anti-Nazi novel in which the final letter is returned marked "Address Unknown", indicating the disappearance of the German character.
C. S. Lewis used the epistolary form forThe Screwtape Letters (1942), and considered writing a companion novel from anangel's point of view – though he never did so. It is less generally realized that hisLetters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964) is 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.
Thornton Wilder's fifth novelIdes of March (1948) consists of letters and documents illuminating the last days of the Roman Republic.
Saul Bellow's novelHerzog (1964) is largely written in letter format. These are both real and imagined letters, written by the protagonist Moses Herzog to family members, friends, and celebrities.
Shūsaku Endō's novelSilence (1966) is an example of the epistolary form, half of which consists of letters from Rodrigues, the other half either in the third person or in letters from other persons.
Daniel Keyes's short story and novelFlowers for Algernon (1959, 1966) takes the form of a series of lab progress reports written by the main character as his treatment progresses, with his writing style changing correspondingly.
The Anderson Tapes (1969, 1970) byLawrence Sanders is a novel primarily consisting of transcripts of tape recordings.
Stephen King's novelCarrie (1974) is partially written in an epistolary structure through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, and book excerpts.
Margaret Atwood'sThe Handmaid's Tale (1985) ends with the reveal that the narrative was a scholar's transcript ofcassette tape recordings made by the protagonist Offred for anoral history, discussed in the meeting minutes of a far-future historical society.[25]
Alice Walker employed the epistolary form inThe Color Purple (1982).[26] The 1985 film adaptation echoes the form by incorporating into the script some of the novel's letters, which the actors deliver as monologues.
John Updike'sS. (1988) is an epistolary novel consisting of the heroine's letters and transcribed audio recordings.
Patricia Wrede andCaroline Stevermer'sSorcery and Cecelia (1988) is an epistolary fantasy novel in aRegency setting from the first-person perspectives of cousins Kate and Cecelia, who recount their adventures in magic and polite society. Unusually for modern fiction, it is written using the style of the letter game.
Avi's young-adult novelNothing but the Truth (1991) uses only documents, letters, and conversation transcripts.
Nick Bantock'sGriffin and Sabine series, told through facsimiles of handwritten postcards and handwritten or typed letters between the two eponymous characters.[27]
Last Words from Montmartre (1995) byQiu Miaojin is a novel written in the form of twenty letters that can be read in any order.
Last Days of Summer (1998) bySteve Kluger is written in a series of letters, telegrams, therapy transcripts, newspaper clippings, and baseball box scores.
House of Leaves byMark Z. Danielewski (2000) is written as a series of found footage film transcripts, essays, fictitious footnotes, and letters spread over several layers of metafiction.
Between Friends byDebbie Macomber (2001) tells the story of a lifelong friendship between Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski from the 1950s to the early 2000s, using a combination of letters (later becoming emails) and daily paraphernalia like a gas station receipt.
Mark Dunn'sElla Minnow Pea (2001) is a progressivelylipogrammatic epistolary novel – the letters become increasingly more difficult to read as the lipogrammatic constraints are brought in, and this requires the reader to attempt to interpret what is being written.
La silla del águila ("The Eagle's Throne") byCarlos Fuentes (2003) is a political satire written as a series of letters between persons in high levels of the Mexican government in 2020. The epistolary format is treated by the author as a consequence of necessity: the United States impedes all telecommunications in Mexico as a retaliatory measure, leaving letters and smoke signals as the only possible methods of communication, particularly ironic given one character's observation that "Mexican politicians put nothing in writing."
The Sluts (2004) byDennis Cooper is composed of online posts, reviews and email correspondence. Each contributes to a central mystery, fuelled by competing narratives about an escort.
The 2004 novelCloud Atlas byDavid Mitchell tells a story in several time periods in a nested format, with some sections told in epistolary style, including an interview, journal entries and a series of letters.
March (2005), byGeraldine Brooks, is a novel depicting the events of the protagonist's experiences during the American Civil War in 1862 through letters.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007) byPaul Torday, is a series of letters, e-mails, interview transcripts, newspaper articles and other non-narrative media.
Illuminae (2015), byJay Kristoff andAmie Kaufman, is told exclusively through a series of classified documents, censored emails, interviews, and others.
This Is Going to Hurt (2017) byAdam Kay is a nonfiction book primarily told through diary entries from when the author was a practicing junior doctor.
^Beebee, Thomas O. (1999).Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 1500–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN9780521622752.
^Salsini, Laura Anne (2010).Addressing the Letter: Italian Women Writers' Epistolary Fiction. University of Toronto Press.ISBN9781442641655.
^A. Takeda.Die Erfindung des Anderen: Zur Genese des fiktionalen Herausgebers im Briefroman des 18. Jahrhunderts. Würzburg, 2008; U. Wirth.Die Geburt des Autors aus dem Geist der Herausgeberfiktion. Editoriale Rahmung im Roman um 1800. Munich, 2008.
^abRosenmeyer, Patricia A. (2001),Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,ISBN9780521800044
^abHodkinson, Owen; Rosenmeyer, Patricia A.; Bracke, Evelien, eds. (2013),Epistolary Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature, Leiden: Brill,ISBN9789004253032
^Rosenmeyer, Patricia A. (2001),Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 133–168,ISBN9780521800044
^Benner, A. R.; Fobes, F. H., eds. (1949),Alciphron, Aelian, and Philostratus: The Letters, Loeb Classical Library 383, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,ISBN0674994213{{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Garbugino, Giovanni (2014), Cueva, Edmund P.; Byrne, Shannon N. (eds.),"Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri",A Companion to the Ancient Novel, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 133–145
^E.Th. Voss.Erzählprobleme des Briefromans, dargestellt an vier Beispielen des 18. Jahrhunderts. Bonn, 1960.
^B.A. Bray.L'art de la lettre amoureuse: des manuels aux romans (1550–1700). La Haye/Paris, 1967
^G. deGuilleragues.Lettres portugaises, Valentins et autres oeuvres. Paris, 1962
^Kauffman, Linda. "Special Delivery: Twenty-first Century Epistolarity in The Handmaid's Tale."Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature (1989): 221-244.
