The Inmost Heart: 800 Years of Women's Letters

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With The Inmost Heart, Olga Kenyon has unearthed eight centuries of lost voices, easily proving that women's letters are indeed "a great art form." Though readers will have heard of many of these correspondents--from Heloise (to Abelard, naturally) to Elizabethan playwright-spy Aphra Behn to Madame de Sévigné--most of us would be hard put to volunteer any solid information. Kenyon organizes these communiqués by theme, including friendship, childhood and education, war work, and political skills. Needless to say, the juxtapositions are enlightening. Contributors to "Housekeeping and Daily Life" include the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (who in 1919 writes of being forced to leave her 2-year-old tied to a chair while she searches Moscow for provisions), Queen Elizabeth I (bemoaning the sorry shape Buckingham Palace is in), and Hannah Cullwick, a servant (anatomizing England's sharp class divisions, circa 1864). While she toils in the kitchen, the upper classes lord it upstairs, "but it's always so with ladies & servants & of course there is a difference cause their bringing up is so different--servants may feel it sharply & do sometimes i believe, but it's best not to be delicate, nor mind what work we do so as it's honest."

There is an evident high seriousness to Kenyon's enterprise--you won't find, for example, any of Nancy Mitford's sparkling missives. On the other hand, she does include a teasing letter from the great Victorian traveler Mary Kingsley, which begins: "My cannibal friends never eat human heads unless for religious purposes."