This month, inspired by the fantastic book The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans, I decided to celebrate the epistolary novel, stories told through letters.

The Correspondent, in which the life story of a 73-year-old woman is unveiled through a series of letters, has been phenomenally successful, demonstrating that the appetite for novels in this style are as popular as ever.

While I can’t name my first exposure to the form, one book does stand out from my childhood, Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. Does anyone else remember this? It was published in 1912, so it was a classic by the time I got to it, but I found it delightful. It’s the story of an orphan who is old enough to graduate from the orphanage, and who is gifted with a college education by an anonymous benefactor. The only requirement is that she write him monthly letters documenting her experiences and education. She knows nothing about him except that he is tall, so she addresses him as Daddy-Long-Legs. The book is very sweet, and maybe too hokey for modern readers, but I did reread it about 15 years ago and I was still charmed.

Jump to college, and I was assigned Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos, thankfully in English. Set in France in the 1700s, and written in 1782, the book presents a series of letters between a presumably proper widowed noblewoman and her one-time secret lover who have maintained a friendship. They embark on a mission to corrupt innocents that turns into a contest. These are awful people, but the story is gripping. It has been made into a play and a movie, but the book is better.

I probably don’t have to mention the bestseller from 2008, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (also made into a movie). A journalist goes to Guernsey after WWII to learn about the wartime occupation of the island by Nazis and finds quite a story.

Stepping back from the post-war period to the pre-war period, with Hitler’s rise to power, I highly recommend the chilling novella, Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressman Taylor.

The form has evolved with the times. If you’d like to read a story that unfolds via emails, Rainbow Rowell’s Attachments is a light romantic comedy that is lot of fun. It was published in 2011 and set in 1999, so it might read a bit dated. (But not as dated as letter writing!)

And finally, another novella, an uplifting story of three grown-up pen-pals who become devoted, supportive friends, is Three Guesses by Chris McClain Johnson.