Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair [Hardcover]

Anna Holmes (Editor), Francine Prose (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 2002

In this extensively researched collection, editor Anna Holmes has amassed an inspirational, historical, and highly entertaining collection of letters from women across the centuries (both known and unknown, fictional and real). From Heloise (of Abelard and Heloise) in the twelfth century, to writer and co-executive producer of Sex in the City Cindy Chupack in the twenty-first; from mad missives and caustic communiques to downhearted dispatches and sweet send-offs, Hell Hath No Fury is the most comprehensive collection on the shelf of letters from the end of the affair. Featuring: the tell off, the other man, the just friends, the unrequited, the marriage refusal, the slow fade, the string-along, the you’ve changed, and reams of other romantic rants, ruminations, and reckonings, included here are correspondences from Agnes Von Kurowsky to Ernest Hemingway, Rebecca West to H. G. Wells, Stella Bowen to Ford Maddox Ford, Nina Eliza Pinchback Toomer, mother of Harlem Renaissance writer and philosopher Jean Toomer, to her estranged husband, Dorothy Thompson to Sinclair Lewis, Candida Royalle, adult film star, to an ex, Jennifer Belle, author of Going Down and High Maintenance to an ex, Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane to an ex, Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of What She Saw to an ex, Monica Lewinsky to Bill Clinton, and many more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Whether a two-line note, a brief e-mail, an expansive retelling of a romance or a lamenting farewell, each letter in journalist Holmes's first book offers a snapshot from the end of an affair. With anger, sorrow, wit, intelligence and whining, such authors as Sylvia Plath, Mary Wollstonecraft, Anne Boleyn, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf and countless lesser-known women analyze what went wrong, say good-bye and address the future, some more happily than others, some impulsively and others with great forethought. Chapters group similar letters (the "tell off," the "just friends," the "marriage refusal," the "unsent letter," etc.), mixing contemporary and historical compositions, so that Monica Lewinsky's 1997 e-mail to President Bill Clinton follows Aline Bernstein's 1930s' correspondence with Thomas Wolfe in the "silent treatment" chapter, and the letter from a young woman named Lois to serviceman Harry Leister during WWII follows Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann's 1942 missive to film producer Irving Mansfield in the "Dear John" chapter. Holmes's comprehensive collection includes letters from epistolary and narrative novels beginning with Ovid's Heroides; prescriptive letters culled from letter-writing manuals; and unsent letters from as recently as October 2001. The careful reader will appreciate the subtle differences between many of the letters, but will have to plow through a quantity of less interesting work before happening on a gem. Many of the letters cannot stand on their own and beg for greater context and additional details about the author and the relationship. Still, literary romantics will have fun thumbing through this unique assemblage of send-off notes.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Motivated by her own disappointing relationship and the responses she received to the "breakup" letter she sent to her lover and to ten other people on the Internet, freelance writer Holmes compiled this anthology of 356 real or fictional letters of love, hatred, anger, disappointment, disgust, and rejection written by women when relationships with their lovers, suitors, or husbands went awry. The collection offers sent and unsent letters between various notables, including Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII, Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay, Princess Margaret to Robin Douglas-Home, Jacqueline Susann to Irvin Mansfield, and Monica Lewinsky to Bill Clinton, as well as those between unknown individuals, those published as literature (e.g., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise), and those published in letter-writing manuals. The anthology is divided into 13 sections, each chronologically arranged, according to types, such as "Marriage Refusal," "Prescriptive Letters," "Goodbye Letter," "Tell-Off," "Dear John," and "Divorce Letter." This book will be consoling to those who discover the universality of experiences and emotions, depressing to those who find the collection an overwhelming overdose of reactions to unfulfilled relationships, and inspiring to those motivated to pursue the relationships of notables mentioned or to study letters as literature. Appropriate for public and academic libraries.
Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition (August 27, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786710373
• ISBN-13: 978-0786710379
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,673,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anna Holmes is a NYC-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, NY Magazine, Glamour, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. Her first book, Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair, was published in 2002. In 2007 she founded the very popular women's website Jezebel.com, which she oversaw until July 2010. Her second book, The Book of Jezebel, was acquired by Grand Central Publishing in November 2010 and is due to hit shelves in early-to-mid 2012. When not reading or writing (or stressing about not reading or writing), she indulges her interests in baseball, politics, animals, food, national parks, film, and sleep.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting Book!, October 7, 2002

By 

Anonymous "Anonymous" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair (Hardcover)

This book contains, as described, letters from women to their partners at the end of the relationships. Some of the letters are laugh-out-loud funny, some poignant, some sad, some cruel, some pathetic and desperate. Some of the letters were written hundreds of years ago, and if you like classic literature, you will really enjoy the writing that comes directly from the hearts of women such as Anais Nin, Charlotte Bronte and Simone de Beauvoir. The letters are divided into categories such as "The Tell-Off", "The 'Just Friends'" and "The Divorce Letter". In each chapter, the letters are arranged chronologically, so if you are looking for a light, amusing read, you can flip to the middle of each chapter and read the more contemporary letters. Not all of the letter-writers are famous women. In fact, one of the leters was found lying on a sidewalk, its author never positively identified. I would recommend this book to someone who really enjoys reading, and enjoys the voyeurism of the peek into what is often the most interesting part of a relationship- its end.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven, March 7, 2005

By 

Reader - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair (Hardcover)

Being, like the reviewer called Kim, interested in the epistolary genre, I eagerly purchased "Hell Hath No Fury". Like her, I found it extremely rewarding in some aspects, disappointing in others. The editor is an amateur (she admits that she knew nothing about the history of women's letters before undertaking this project), which may account for some of the flaws in this otherwise engaging book. Some of the letters could certainly have been dispensed with. Tanya's letter, with its tiresome stream of abuse (come on! do we really need to read about her boyfriend performing oral sex on her right after she had finished having sex with another man?) was gratuitous obscenity, but Leigh L.'s was something even worse, revealing racism and a nastiness which I personally found disgusting ("I guess that's what comes with being a good Jewish girl in bed with a Mexican", "thanks for letting me take your Panamanian virginity away" - you get the style; however, for a "good girl", she does seem to have been sleeping around a bit, and anyway, what exactly is a "Panamanian virginity" like?).

If you can overlook this sort of trash, and those letters that simply are not interesting enough, you may find some worthwhile - and occasionally moving - pieces. I deeply identified with Kate Christensen's frustration at her relationship with John, having felt exactly the same impotence and wretchedness when faced with my then-boyfriend's utter lack of understanding or respect for my beliefs and feelings. I also enjoyed the 63-year-old woman's letter to the man she had met on the internet - although I'm much younger, I could identify with what she felt. And the historical as well as some of the literary letters are a delight.

Another drawback that I found was the unusual, extremely high number of typographical errors, which made me wonder if I might not have been reading an uncorrected copy. But the good quality of the paper and altogether nice edition sort of made up for that :)

All in all, it's an enjoyable book (even if it's so uneven as to make you wonder why some of the letters are featured at all) and I read it through in only a few days because of its historical and emotional interest. I suggest you get a used copy - even though it'll probably make a fun read, I don't think it's worth buying new.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I think you're wrong, November 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair (Hardcover)

While some of the letters in this book are disturbing and intense, I disagree with the reviewer who says that the book is sickening. There are many loving letters as well as cruel ones, and the loving ones WAY outnumber the cruel ones. And the arrangement of the letters in the book is proof that we all react to breakups differently...some more maturely than others.