8 Books That Explore the Love Letters of Literary Icons

Love letters are a romantic gesture that are disappearing from our relationships. Today, we can shoot a text or an email within seconds, and we don’t have to think about the language we employ or the sentiment we’re trying to express. Emojis do all the work. But for centuries, we wrote letters to our loved ones. And because these letters could take weeks or even months (especially during wartime) to arrive, lovers had to use every word and sentiment at their disposal. They’d write on both sides of the page, up the margins, and even on the envelope, to let their lover know the depths of their heart and affection. When it comes to the love letters of famous authors, we can get a glimpse into the secrets of our favorite novelist’s heart. Was Franz Kafka as misanthropic as his Metamorphosis protagonist Gregor Samsa? Did Jack Kerouac really believe in the free love/zero attachments romantic style of the 50s and 60s? 

I’ve always been a collector of old love letters. Before writing my forthcoming historical fiction novel, Letters to Kafka, I was known about town as the gal who bought old love letters. I bought stacks of them at flea markets in Europe, had them framed, and hung them with pride on my bedroom wall. In Canada, I bought a stack of love letters sent during the Second World War from a Royal Canadian Air Force officer stationed overseas to the sweetheart he left behind in Toronto, and was so besotted by their story, I tracked down a living relative to learn the rest of the story. When I came across the love story of famed 20th century author Franz Kafka and his first translator, Czech writer Milena Jesenská, I thought to myself, “Wow, someone should write a novel about this.” And then I realized, “Wait a minute … I’m someone.”

Kafka, although from Prague, wrote exclusively in German. Jesenská, also from Prague, wrote to him seeking permission to translate his works into their native Czech. Their letters quickly turned romantic, and despite his frequent illness and her marriage, they met twice for lovers’ trysts. Kafka’s letters to her were posthumously published in the 1950s in the book Letters to Milena. However, Jesenská’s letters to Kafka were never found; they have been lost to time. In my novel, Letters to Kafka, I imagine what her letters to him might have said, and what might have happened on those trysts. Old love letters aren’t just full of saccharine sweetness and misguided devotion (although those elements are fun), they are also a snapshot into a time period long gone. For Kafka and Jesenská, theirs was a time of telegrams and inkwells, Poste Restante addresses, and horse-pulled carriages outnumbered the motorized vehicles. Like an eyewitness news report from the front lines of today, old love letters can give us a window into the particulars of a world forgotten.

Kafka and Jesenská’s epistolary love affair exists amongst great company; many literary icons of the past have pursued the object of their desire through the written word. If you’re jonesing for more historical letters from literature’s finest, here’s a list of my personal faves.

Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka, translated by Philip Boehm

Beginning in 1920, Kafka’s letters to Milena very quickly become amorous, and the frequency at which they’re sent is fast and furious. In his letters, Kafka is consumed by her charm, wit, and intelligence, but also petrified she might reject him because of his illness, his small frame, and because he is Jewish. His words are so passionate, it’s easy to see why she was willing to risk her marriage for him. Some of the most famous declarations of love are found in his turns of phrase, including “You are the knife I turn inside myself. That is love. That, my dear, is love.” 

Door Wide Open by Joyce Johnson and Jack Kerouac

The “greats” of the 1950s Beat Generation, like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs are all notably men. Before Kerouac made it to the big time with his book On the Road, he had a love affair with one of the women populating the scene in Greenwich Village: Joyce Johnson. As Johnson reflects in this epistolary memoir, she was a young 21 year-old trying to learn how to love in an era of emotional detachment ruled by men, while also figuring out her own voice and style. Their relationship was marked by passion but also distance as Kerouac was a largely peripatetic waif before On the Road hit the bestseller list. Their endearing and intimate letters capture both the thrill and the pain of a young affair but also how Kerouac, bit by bit, became more restless, more booze-dependent, and refused to commit to a besotted Johnson.

So Long, Marianne by Kari Hesthamar, translated by Helle V. Goldman

In the 1960s, before famed Canadian folk singer Leonard Cohen became a household name, he was a down-and-out writer and poet of universally ignored books like Beautiful Losers. He had taken up residence on the Greek island of Hydra to focus on writing when he met Norwegian author Marianne Ihlen, and embarked on a tumultuous, bittersweet love affair that lasted a decade, and is memorialized in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye.” The eponymous book draws on the pair’s intimate love letters to tell their story.

A Literate Passion by Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin

An ocean of ink has been spilled trying to dissect the turbulent love affair between these two literary icons, but “dissect” might be the tamest word possible to describe the NSFW erotica their letters contain. You don’t have to take my word for it. Take Miller’s: “I love your loins, the golden pallor, the slope of your buttocks, the warmth inside you, the juices of you. Anaïs, I love you so much, so much! […]I am sitting here writing you with a tremendous erection.”

Yours, for Probably Always by Janet Somerville

Martha Gellhorn was one of the first women war correspondents of the 20th century. She roughed it out in the trenches of the Spanish Civil War and was on the ground during the liberation of the notorious German concentration camp, Dachau. But when it came to love, her affair with literary giant Ernest Hemingway, which resulted in a doomed marriage of less than five years, takes the cake. Canadian author Somerville incorporates not only Gellhorn’s love letters to Hemingway (via ongoing access to Gellhorn’s restricted papers located in Boston), but also, quite often, his responses. It’s an unfiltered glimpse into their love, their marriage, their struggles, and ultimately, what separated them.

Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka, translated by James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth

In order to understand the true nature of Kafka, one must look to his intimate letters to the women he loved. Kafka was famously engaged three times—twice to the same woman, Felice Bauer—however he never married. In a letter to Milena Jesenská, he once claimed that he loved Bauer because she “was good at business.” But his letters to her reveal much more. There is nothing Kafkaesque here—his letters convey a relationship that is sensitive and sweet. Readers may not associate Kafka with a wicked sense of humor, but his self-deprecation in these letters even veers into slapstick.

So Bright and Delicate by John Keats

When famed director Jane Campion released her John Keats and Fanny Brawne biopic Bright Star in 2009 (which you must watch), she also released this book which compiles some of Keats most lovelorn letters. Despite the fact that Keats died at the age of 25, his letters to Brawne have been canonized as the gold-standard of epistolary love. “You are to me an object intensely desirable—the air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy.”

Furious Love by Nancy Schoenberger and Sam Kashner

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In the weeks leading up to her death, Elizabeth Taylor granted access to the love letters she exchanged with Richard Burton for this book. The two had famously caused an adulterous scandal on the set of Cleopatra as co-stars, and ultimately married, and divorced, twice. Although neither were writers, their love letters are second to none. Burton wrote to Taylor, “I am forever punished by the Gods for being given fire and trying to put it out. The fire, of course, is you.” And later, “My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you.” Taylor wrote in return that Burton “was magnificent at making love… at least to me.”

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