Signed, sealed, delivered: using letters in historical fiction

Throughout history, letter-writing has been a vital part of human interaction, connecting people separated by time, place or social circumstances. From the early 19th to mid-20th century, with the rise in literacy and the establishment of postal services, letter-writing reached a peak; the letter could aspire to a literary form and well-known figures expected their letters to be published after their death. More humble families, often displaced or scattered by social change, increasingly relied on letters to stay in touch. As e-communications take over, they too are becoming the stuff of fiction, but for the historical novelist, the hand-written letter reigns supreme.

Stuck with the plot? Try a letter!

If letters were part of the fabric of everyday life, what a boon they have been to novelists! They are such a great way to convey information about events happening off-stage with the potential bonus of adding a fresh voice to our narrative. Letters can hurry our action along, or in an extended correspondence they can slow it down, as lovers, relatives or friends indulge in an asynchronous dialogue while other significant things (think Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society!) are happening. A letter is also ideal for delivering the knock-out blow or dawn of understanding, like in Persuasion when Captain Wentworth writes a letter to Anne Elliott while they are in the same room, conveying what he has never felt able to put into words.

More conventionally, all letters in fiction carry a touch of jeopardy. What happens if they fall into the wrong hands, divulging incriminating secrets or treasured confidences? Or what if the recipient fails to read between the lines, or reads into them something that was never there at all. There’s also the opportunity for the letter-writer to be economical with the truth in a way they might not risk in a face to face encounter, affording a ready-made unreliable narrator. Add to this the vagaries of postal systems, or the careless or malevolent behaviour of messengers, and we have a whole new swathe of plot possibilities.

In fact, letters are so seductive a proposition that some novelists create an entire fictional correspondence, as in A.S. Byatt’s Possession where letters between two Victorian poets are the subject of a scholarly investigation, or in Miss Austen, where Gill Hornby recreates the lost letters of Jane to write the story of her sister Cassandra. Taking this to its ultimate degree, we have the epistolary novel, where the entire narrative is composed of letters, diaries or other quasi-real documents, adding lively authenticity to a story we know to be fiction. (If you don’t know them, check out His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet or Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things – apologies here for my Scottish bias!).

From research to inspiration

For the researcher, letters are absolute gold, a window into other times. While writing my previous novel (In the Blink of an Eye, Linen Press 2018) I was able to read some of my hero’s original letters in manuscript form, allowing me to hear his voice, share his daily concerns and pinpoint the dates of some events. But what if such real letters, published or unpublished, also have a story to tell? Can we weave them into our novel as an intriguing factual strand, or even use them for the thrust of the narrative? Not surprisingly, the most potent examples of this involve affairs of the heart.

Dawn Tripp’s excellent Georgia (2016) recounts the story of artist Georgia O’Keefe, and her relationship with photographer Alfred Stieglitz which began after she sent him some work, instigating a correspondence in which a ‘curious intimacy’ began to evolve. In the novel, by the time the two artists meet, there is a strong erotic charge between them. The original letters were published while Tripp was writing her novel, but she doesn’t reproduce any of them verbatim, taking them more as inspiration, incorporating occasional words or phrases and borrowing their style.

More strikingly, in his recent Precipice, Robert Harris had access to the private letters written by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to the young socialite Venetia Stanley for whom the PM nursed a grand passion. Harris uses the letters exactly as he found them, raw material around which he weaves a compelling narrative of high emotion taking place alongside (and maybe influencing?) the strident pre-war politics of 1914. Venetia’s replies, on the other hand, were destroyed. For these Harris must resort to fiction. For the novelist, it is surely these lacunae, the missing pieces of the jigsaw, which are so intriguing and which propel us to ponder over surviving letters and consider how we might fill in the blanks.

Real or imaginary?

Even if we are lucky enough to uncover a previously unknown correspondence, I wonder if we would use them in a novel? A book of letters, after all, would be just that, a source document or a memoir (like the many World War 1 letters from the trenches) or material for a biography. Far better we should approach real letters in the way we approach history in general. They are there for us to put to our creative use. If you discover a fascinating correspondence, by all means immerse yourself in these historical treasures and mine them for aspects of character and voice. You might even use them for a strand (just the one) of your narrative, but we must allow ourselves creative freedom too. Like Dawn Tripp, I used none of the real letters of R.L. Stevenson in The Absent Heart, but by immersing myself in them I gained enough understanding of his thoughts and writing style to round off the book with a letter he certainly never wrote, but which I like to think he might well have.

Dos and don’ts for writers

• As with any first-person narrative, beware of doing too much ‘telling’ by letter. Even (or especially) in the epistolary novel, there has to be some nuance in the interaction, allowing us to read, or guess, between the lines.
• In particular, avoid using an unexpected letter from a new character to solve the entire mystery. This ‘deus ex machina’ will irritate rather than satisfy the reader.
• When it comes to real letters, be sure of the copyright situation (not just for the original letters but the publisher’s and editor’s copyright where this applies). For UK law, the Society of Authors has a helpful guide: Copyright and permissions – The Society of Authors.
• As ever, the author’s notes are your friend and your defence. Make absolutely clear where you have used original sources or how you have adapted them.

Letters, real or imaginary, are a fabulous resource for the historical novelist. Seek out any letters from your period to inform your knowledge of people and society. If you come up with nuggets of gold on which you can base a novel, that’s a bonus, but don’t forget your ultimate right, to simply make things up. Signed, sealed, delivered; lost, stolen or suddenly found, letters have it all. The choice is yours!