Epistolary novel Facts for Kids

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters or other documents. The word epistolary comes from the Latin form of the Greek word ἐπιστολή (epistolē), meaning a letter (see epistle). The epistolary form of writing can make the story seem more realistic to the reader. This is because it is more personal, and is more like the workings of real life.

Notable works
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See also

Notable works

Title page of the second edition of Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), a bestselling early epistolary novel

The epistolary novel form has continued to be used after the eighteenth century.

Eighteenth century

Lettres persanes, a 1721 novel by Montesquieu.
Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson 1740, a bestselling early epistolary novel which prompted artistic interest in the epistolary form.
Evelina by Frances Burney, first published in 1778.
Julie; or, The New Heloise, an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761.
The Sorrows of Young Werther is a 1774 novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
Cartas marruecas (Moroccan Letters), a 1789 novel by José Cadalso, Spanish author, poet, playwright and essayist.

Nineteenth century

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) uses a frame story written in the form of letters, with the main narrative being told as a first person account by the titular character.
Fyodor Dostoevsky used the epistolary format for his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), as a series of letters between two friends, struggling to cope with their impoverished circumstances and life in Imperial-era Russia.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by English author Anne Brontë is framed as a series of letters and diary entries.
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins uses a collection of various documents to construct a detective novel in English. In the second piece, a character explains that he is writing his portion because another had observed to him that the events surrounding the disappearance of the eponymous diamond might reflect poorly on the family, if misunderstood, and therefore he was collecting the true story. This is an unusual element, as most epistolary novels present the documents without questions about how they were gathered. He also used the form previously in The Woman in White (1859).
Spanish foreign minister Juan Valera's Pepita Jiménez (1874) is written in three sections, the first and third being a series of letters, the middle part narrated by an unknown observer.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) uses not only letters and diaries, but also dictation cylinders and newspaper accounts.

Twentieth century

Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace's The Documents in the Case (1930).
E.M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930).
Kathrine Taylor's Address Unknown (1938) is an anti-Nazi novel in which the final letter is returned marked "Address Unknown", indicating the disappearance of the German character.
C. S. Lewis used the epistolary form for The Screwtape Letters (1942), and considered writing a companion novel from an angel's point of view – though he never did so. It is less generally realized that his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964) is a similar exercise, exploring theological questions through correspondence addressed to a fictional recipient, "Malcolm", though this work may be considered a "novel" only loosely in that developments in Malcolm's personal life gradually come to light and impact the discussion.
Thornton Wilder's fifth novel Ides of March (1948) consists of letters and documents illuminating the last days of the Roman Republic.
Saul Bellow's novel Herzog (1964) is largely written in letter format. These are both real and imagined letters, written by the protagonist Moses Herzog to family members, friends, and celebrities.
Shūsaku Endō's novel Silence (1966) is an example of the epistolary form, half of which consists of letters from Rodrigues, the other half either in the third person or in letters from other persons.
Daniel Keyes's short story and novel Flowers for Algernon (1959, 1966) takes the form of a series of lab progress reports written by the main character as his treatment progresses, with his writing style changing correspondingly.
The Anderson Tapes (1969, 1970) by Lawrence Sanders is a novel primarily consisting of transcripts of tape recordings.
Stephen King's novel Carrie (1974) is partially written in an epistolary structure through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, and book excerpts.
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, 1985, ends with an epilogue consisting of the minutes from the meeting of a historical society in the future discussing the text of the novel, revealed to have been recently transcribed from a series of cassette tape recordings made by the protagonist Offred.
Alice Walker employed the epistolary form in The Color Purple (1982). The 1985 film adaptation echoes the form by incorporating into the script some of the novel's letters, which the actors deliver as monologues.
John Updike's S. (1988) is an epistolary novel consisting of the heroine's letters and transcribed audio recordings.
Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia (1988) is an epistolary fantasy novel in a Regency setting from the first-person perspectives of cousins Kate and Cecelia, who recount their adventures in magic and polite society. Unusually for modern fiction, it is written using the style of the letter game.
Avi's young-adult novel Nothing but the Truth (1991) uses only documents, letters, and conversation transcripts.
Last Words from Montmartre (1995) by Qiu Miaojin is a novel written in the form of twenty letters that can be read in any order.
Last Days of Summer (1998) by Steve Kluger is written in a series of letters, telegrams, therapy transcripts, newspaper clippings, and baseball box scores.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) was written by Stephen Chbosky in the form of letters from an anonymous character to a secret role model of sorts.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000) is written as a series of found footage film transcripts, essays, fictitious footnotes, and letters spread over several layers of metafiction.

Twenty-first century

Between Friends by Debbie Macomber (2001) tells the story of a lifelong friendship between Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski from the 1950s to the early 2000s, using a combination of letters (later becoming emails) and daily paraphernalia like a gas station receipt.
Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea (2001) is a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary novel – the letters become increasingly more difficult to read as the lipogrammatic constraints are brought in, and this requires the reader to attempt to interpret what is being written.
La silla del águila ("The Eagle's Throne") by Carlos Fuentes (2003) is a political satire written as a series of letters between persons in high levels of the Mexican government in 2020. The epistolary format is treated by the author as a consequence of necessity: the United States impedes all telecommunications in Mexico as a retaliatory measure, leaving letters and smoke signals as the only possible methods of communication, particularly ironic given one character's observation that "Mexican politicians put nothing in writing."
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2003) is a monologic epistolary novel written as a series of letters from Eva, Kevin's mother, to her husband Franklin.
The 2004 novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell tells a story in several time periods in a nested format, with some sections told in epistolary style, including an interview, journal entries and a series of letters.
March (2005), by Geraldine Brooks, is a novel depicting the events of the protagonist's experiences during the American Civil War in 1862 through letters.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006), by Max Brooks, is a series of interviews from various survivors of a zombie apocalypse.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007) by Paul Torday, is a series of letters, e-mails, interview transcripts, newspaper articles and other non-narrative media.
The White Tiger (2008) by Aravind Adiga, winner of the 40th Man Booker Prize in 2008, is a novel in the form of letters written by an Indian villager to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008), by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, is written as a series of letters and telegraphs sent and received by the protagonist.
A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan has parts which are epistolary in nature. One chapter is written as a report of a celebrity interview, and another as a PowerPoint presentation.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) by Maria Semple is told in a series of documents such as emails, memos and transcripts.
Illuminae, by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufmann, is told exclusively through a series of classified documents, censored emails, interviews, and others.

Images for kids

Title page of Aphra Behn's early epistolary novel, Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684)

Epistolary novel facts for kids

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