In our June issue we celebrate the joy of penpal letters. Here are a few famous penpals whose correspondence we’d love to sneak a look at…
JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis
Tolkien and Lewis were great mates and kept up the friendship via letters, too. Though both rather serious literary figures, apparently their letters were full of fun.
Catherine The Great and Voltaire
Even rulers and philosophers need to unburden themselves sometimes. This pair corresponded for some 15 years.
PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie
Showing it’s never too late to get a penpal, Wodehouse and Christie began their correspondence when he was 88 and she was 79. They were both huge fans of the other’s work.
Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker
Darwin wrote to botanist, Hooker, for many years, even setting out his early idea that animal species ‘might not be immutable’ years before he wrote about evolution fully in On The Origin of Species.
Henry James and Edith Wharton
These two great novelists corresponded for most of their adult lives, unburdening themselves about their personal troubles in letters (Wharton had an unhappy marriage and James suffered with depression).
Vincent and Theo Van Gogh
The artist was a prolific letter writer, but the person he wrote to most frequently was his brother Theo, who kept them all carefully, and many of them can still be read today. Sadly, his less careful brother Vincent destroyed most of Theo’s letters back to him. There’s brotherly love for you.
Read more about penfriends, how to find them, what to write to them and more in our June issue, on sale now.
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