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Shaun Usher

Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (Historical Nonfiction Letters, Letters from Famous People, Book of Letters and Correspondance) Hardcover – May 6, 2014

by Shaun Usher (Compiler)

536 ratings

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This spectacular collection of more than 125 letters offers a never-before-seen glimpse of the events and people of history—the brightest and best, the most notorious, and the endearingly everyday. Entries include a transcript of the letter; a short contextual introduction; and, in 100 cases, a captivating facsimile of the letter itself. The artfulness of Shaun Usher's eclectic arrangement creates a reading experience rich in discovery. Mordant, hilarious, poignant, enlightening—surprise rewards each turn of the page. Colorfully illustrated with photographs, portraits, and relevant artworks, this handsome hardcover is a visual treat too, making Letters of Note an utterly distinctive gift, and an instant classic.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Chronicle Books
Publication date

May 6, 2014
Dimensions

8.25 x 1.25 x 11.25 inches
ISBN-10

9781452134253
ISBN-13

978-1452134253
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57 offers from $4.21
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60 offers from $3.51
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65 offers from $4.14
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Shaun Usher
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From the Publisher


	Cat Tarot	Star Wars: Secrets of the Galaxy Deluxe Box Set	Star Spinner Tarot	I Could Pee on This	Position of the Day
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	Dangerous Games to Play in the Dark	I Was Here Journal	The Grown-A** Women's Club Journal	K if for Knifeball	Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Letters of Note' has been my favorite summer book, full of the kinds of letters I hope to find in my own mailbox, but rarely, these days, ever do."
-The Advocate

"It is a truly beautiful book."
-The Bookseller (UK)

"Every single epistle in Letters of Note is soul-stretching beyond measure."
-Brain Pickings

"An eloquent tribute to the lost art of letter writing."
GQ magazine (UK)

"...an anthology of Shaun Usher's wonderful blog of the same name. It's well worth picking up."
Quartz

"...a stupendous collection of memorable missives, often by famous people - and with facsimiles, each page is a marvel...Letters of Note is quite literally the most enjoyable volume it is possible to imagine."
-The Spectator (UK)

"While a good portion of history happened out in the open, allowing it to be preserved in the history books for everyone to read for generations, still more happened in the private correspondence of people who mattered. In Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (brought to you by the creator of the blog by the same name) you'll read letters spanning across centuries, from influential political leaders, authors, actors, murderers, and more. Each one lends a unique insight into the major events of the time, whether they're wars, cultural shifts, key moments, or important discoveries. This epistolary compilation contains over 300 letters, detailing the personal thoughts of everyone from Jack the Ripper to Kurt Vonnegut."
-Uncrate

holiday Gift Guide Pick "Usher has been showcasing epistles on his website for years; now 125 of his favorites, written by the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Fidel Castro and Richard Feynman, are gathered in this incomparable compendium of human relationships and emotion."
-Time Out NY

Holiday Gift Guide Pick
"Shaun Usher's glorious selection of letters from writers, royalty, rock stars and ordinary citizens, makes you yearn to find a witty handwritten or typed missive in your mailbox. Drawn from the blog of the same name, this lovely volume combines photographs, transcriptions and commentary. "
-Newsday

Starred Review " Based on the blog of the same name, this collection of letters is so handsome that it looks like a coffee-table book, but it's more than that. In it, Queen Elizabeth II sends a note to President Dwight Eisenhower reflecting on Mamie and Ike's visit to Balmoral Castle: she appends her recipe for scones. The chairman of the Whitehall Vigilance Committee receives a package with a note from Jack the Ripper accompanied by half a human kidney, pickled in wine: "I fried and ate it was very nise." Gandhi appeals to Hitler as the only one who can avert the impending war. Bank robber Clyde Barrow tells Henry Ford he only drives Fords. Francis Crick alerts his son about DNA. A wife writes to her samurai husband on the eve of battle (he died in the fighting, she committed suicide) and an ex-slave addresses his former master. This treasure trove of fascinating material includes more than 125 letters from both the famous and the unknown dating as far back as 1340 BCE, many reproduced in facsimile.A beautiful collection that should appeal to everyone. Start reading it and you're lost. "
- Library Journal

"Reading through them is addictive, like dipping into a bag of variously tempting assorted candies, knowing that the next one will always bring surprise and pleasure. "
-The New Yorker

"This new book beautifully highlights fascinating letters ...The hardcover demands prime space on the coffee table."
USA Today's Pop Candy

"It's the kind of book you'll go back to again and again, and find something new every time. It's a celebration of what makes us human, and gathered together, they have a powerful effect. If nothing else, it will make you want to jot down a letter of your own."
- Yakima Herald

"Someone should write a love letter to a new book called Letters of Note. It's a splendid collection of all kinds of correspondence through the ages: Elvis Presley fans writing to the president, children making suggestions to famous cartoonists, a scientist's poignant love letter to his late wife."
- A Way With Words

"While some might argue that the art of correspondence died with the advent of the internet, it was Letters of Note-a popular website sharing correspondence across history and spheres-that paved the way for the exceptional hardcover of the same name. The book's introduction aptly describes itself as "a museum of letters" that are as addictive as they are enlightening; featuring letters from Ernest Hemingway, Fidel Castro, Nick Cave, Elvis and more than a few world leaders.

London-based author Shaun Usher compiled the collection of over 125 letters over the course of four years and the subjects span both private and public theatrics. A letter from Elvis Presley to President Nixon is written in-flight on American Airlines stationary, in which Presley expresses his patriotism and requests to be made a Federal Agent, "just so long as it is kept very private." Each of the letters is accompanied with a contextual note from Usher that only serves to add to the fascination and potential rabbit hole of additional research readers might find themselves falling into.

From art to music, politics, history, civil rights and drawing on just about every human emotion, it's easy to get lost in the 342-page tome. Each letter tells its own stories and it is easy to find oneself interested in new subjects. Perhaps the book's greatest virtue (and that of correspondence itself) is its ability to inject individual humanity into historical events and time periods. One highlight is a letter from a free slave to his former master, kindly rejecting an offer of a job while inquiring about the family and describing his new life. These true stories-whether they're between household names or persons unknown-reflect the great importance of interpersonal communication and the beauty of long-form written conversation."
- Cool Hunting

About the Author

Shaun Usher founded the blog-based archive Letters of Note, hugely popular internationally. He lives in Manchester, England.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1452134251
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Chronicle Books; 1st edition (May 6, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781452134253
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1452134253
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.44 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.25 x 1.25 x 11.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #189,378 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #84 in Literary Letters
- #132 in Rhetoric (Books)
- #593 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences

Customer Reviews:
536 ratings

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Shaun Usher

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Shaun Usher is the writer and sole custodian of the popular blogs listsofnote.com and lettersofnote.com. As a result, he spends much of his life hunting down letters and making lists of things he'd like to share. His first book, Letters of Note, was jointly published by Unbound and Canongate to widespread acclaim and has since become an international bestseller. Shaun lives in Manchester with his wife Karina and their two sons.

Customer reviews

5 star		81%
4 star		10%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jeff

Fantastic book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 24, 2022

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Worth the read. If you can read, you should consider reading it

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Annabelle Adriano

History is best judged by the letters of men who wrote them.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a hefty book, as heavy as my old accounting textbooks. A necessary consideration, since some of the actual letters are showcased here. Not all of which are that noteworthy, though, thus the 3-star rating. But there are some letters of note here, and below are my personal choices, aka "unforgettables:"

- Jack the Ripper's letter, which came with a token of half a kidney preserved in wine
- E.B. White's inspiring letter to "wind the clock"
- Francis Carr-Gomm's letters to The Times concerning his hospital's guest, John Merrick (literally, the elephant in the room)
- A savvy application letter by one Robert Pirosh
- Virginia Woolf's unsentimental letter of farewell to her husband
- Jourdon Anderson's letter of response to his former slave master's letter asking him to return as a paid employee
- A teenaged Fidel Castro's letter to President Roosevelt, asking for $10 and offering to point out the locations of the iron mines of Cuba
- Two mothers' letters to The Founding Asylum, explaining why they had to give up their babies
- Katharine Hepburn's letter to Spencer Tracy, eighteen years after his death
- Charles Schultz's deadpan letter to a fan, acquiescing to her request to do away with an apparently unlikeable character named Charlotte Braun
- Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
- Three teenyboppers' desperate letter to President Eisenhower, asking him NOT TO TOUCH Sergeant Elvis Presley's sideburns
- Amelia Earhart's pragmatic letter to her groom, written the night before their wedding
- Convicted WWII deserter Eddie Slovik's futile plea to President Eisenhower
- Missionary and survivor of the first order Lucy Thurston's agonizing letter to her daughter, detailing her breast cancer surgery on a Hawaiian island, sans anaesthesia and antibiotics
- Emily Dickinson's cryptic letter to her sister-in-law
- Alec Guinness cheeky letter to a friend, with a jibe at the movie that would re-introduce him to a new generation, and which he was filming at the time the letter was written
- Flannery O'Connor's response to a pedantic professor's questions (insistence?) of allegories in her short story A Good Man is Hard to Find
- Slave owner Sarah Logue's letter to her former slave Jermain Loguen, chiding him for his escape but insisting on his return, and his fitting riposte
- Robert T. Lincoln's letter to a magazine editor, clarifying a curious coincidence involving the brother of the man who killed his father, Abraham Lincoln
- Alleta Sullivan's surprisingly composed letter to President Eisenhower, inquiring about her five drafted sons, who were rumored to have perished at sea
- The letter that will most likely make me read Slaughterhouse-Five is the writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's candid letter to his father immediately after his 5-month captivity by the Germans

4 people found this helpful

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Red Ranter

Letters of note : A review after an initial indulgence.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 1, 2014

Verified Purchase

Today, I received my copy of “Letters of Note” , compiled by Shawn Usher. True to its title, this master piece contained missives that communicated a myriad of emotions, raised pertinent questions and advised the ones in need.

If first impressions are truly the best impressions, merely by ripping the package open and holding the book you could feel the beauty of the words that are contained within. The cover design was perfect - crisp, clean and minimalistic. The typography lends a rich grandeur which these letters of note truly deserve and needless to say, it evoke the emotions that come with holding a hard cover.

As a reader, I cannot but applaud the efforts of Shawn and his team in putting together this master piece of eclectic correspondance. Every page has been chiseled with utmost craft that sings hymns of reverence about the words that were residing in them. Within a couple of hours, I had lived through the sorrow of a royal queen about to breathe her last, felt my blood go cold reading the letter titled“From Hell” by Jack the Ripper and smiled at the relevance of reading Hunter S Thompson’s thoughts. Some of these letters, whose originals have been printed along with are the closest one can get to a time travel portal. A few vertical scrolls of my eye balls and voila!, I was there in the late 1800s, right next to Virgina Wolf has she continued to fight the losing battle with her schizophrenia. Science still has a long way to go, in terms of mimicking the power of human imagination. Upon reading this work, one cannot help but think even though we as humanity have progressed in leaps and bounds in terms of technology and life style, have lost out a lot in the art of truly communicating and asking questions that makes us think long, hard, deep and all other attributes alike.

I recommend this piece of art for one who loves to think about anything and everything, a someone who loves history, nature of existence and all things that come with it. In the coming years, we can only hope that the efforts towards unearthing such priceless treasures continue.

Until then let us savor these crown jewels — they don’t make many like these nowadays.

As published by me on https://medium.com/@thambinator/letters-of-note-a-review-after-an-initial-indulgence-7a70d7700b30

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

brooke

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Excellent book! Arrived in stated timeframe.

Finchley

Fascinating information about people you thought you knew

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

Totally absorbing. One can learn a great deal about the true character of numerous well known figures from their letters. Amelia Earhart was a woman before her time in ways other than flying!
E mail is going to totally erase this form of self expression. What a loss!

Dorothyanne Brown

Peeking into other's lives...

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

A fascinating read, which makes you yearn for more, this is a carefully curated book of letters. I love reading other people's letters; in fact this book makes me want to explore so many more. It's a beautiful book, too, a lovely present and diverse enough to be appreciated by many.

2 people found this helpful

marcelle

Interesting view on history

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on March 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

This book gives you a more private look into historical events and characters through the very personal reports and perspectives given on the letters. A must read.