Outpourings of love and loss

The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection makes an ideal companion volume. Here are missives both literary and otherwise, all of them destined never to be read by their intended recipients. Some are grave, some are tender; some are funny, several are vengeful or self-justifying. It’s a great idea for a book.

A letter which goes missing is of course a standard tragedy-inducing device in fiction. Romeo could have lived had he received Juliet’s letter; but perhaps the most heartbreaking of all is poor Tess Durbeyfield’s to Angel Clare. Never was a flap of carpet responsible for so much misery. Atkins includes some terribly sad real-life letters too: Captain Scott’s, addressed ‘To my widow’, and Van Gogh’s penultimate letter to his sainted brother, as well as a couple between doomed first world war sweethearts.