You know I love lists. The thing with lists is they always generate more book ideas. I received so many wonderful suggestions for epistolary novels, I thought I would list the suggestions here. Nearly all of them are entirely new to me and will give me ideas when I want a book in this category (and having them all in a list like this makes it easy for me when I head off to the library). So without further ado, more epistolary novels:
- Humphry Clinker, Tobias George Smollett - "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker was the last of the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett, and is considered by many to be his best and funniest work. Published in London on 17 June 1771, it is an epistolary novel, presented in the form of letters written by six different characters: Matthew Bramble, a Welsh Squire; his sister Tabitha; their niece and nephew, Jery and Lydia Melford; Tabitha's maid Winifred Jenkins; and Lydia's suitor, Wilson.
- Christmas Letters, Lee Smith - "Smith writes an epistolary, here in the form of Christmas greetings sent from North Carolina by female members of the Pickett family. In what they say and don't say these articulate, down-to-earth women preserve three generations of American experience."
- Nausea, Jean Paul Sartre - "Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation."
- The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir - "Three long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises." See also Litlove's wonderful post on this book.
- We Need to Talk About Kevin , Lionel Shriver - "In a series of brutally introspective missives to her husband, Franklin, from whom she is separated, Eva tries to come to grips with the fact that their 17-year-old son, Kevin, has killed seven students and two adults with his crossbow."
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker - "Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self."
- Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding - "In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)."
- These is My Words, Nancy Turner - "Based on the real-life exploits of the author's great-grandmother, this fictionalized diary vividly details one woman's struggles with life and love in frontier Arizona at the end of the last century. When she begins recording her life, Sarah Prine is an intelligent, headstrong 18-year-old capable of holding her own on her family's settlement near Tucson."
- Between Friends, Debbie Macomber - "Prolific Macomber's latest traces the lives and friendship of Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski through their letters, diaries, and other correspondence."
- Dear Zoe, Phillip Beard - "When her little sister, Zoe, dies after being struck by a car on September 11, 2001, savvy, self-aware Tess DeNunzio works through her grief by writing letters to Zoe."
- Dearest Stranger, Dearest Friend, Laney K. Becker - "E-mail and the Internet are phenomena not fully integrated into the characters' lives in this earnest, appealing debut novel told in the form of epistolary e-mail. After Lara Cohen, a 38-year-old freelance copywriter in Armonk, N.Y., discovers a lump in her left breast, she posts her fears on a breast cancer Web site's bulletin board. A breast cancer survivor named Susan Peterson from Canton, Ohio, responds with the right mixture of sobriety and jocularity, and an e-mail friendship is born."
- Evelina, Frances Burney - "Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London. As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence in an image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens, theatre visits, and balls."
- Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte - "In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a devout young woman named Helen falls in love with a man who is handsome, but whose values are questionable; willing to believe she can alter his character, she marries him. Her marriage becomes a misery she has no power to change until she devises a bold plan to take control. Her story comes through two voices - her own and that of Gilbert Markham, a man who falls in love with Helen later in her life - and is told through journals and letters written over a period of time."
- Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy , Jean Webster - "One of the great novels of American girlhood, Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long- Legs (1912) follows the adventures of an orphan named Judy Abbott, whose letters to her anonymous male benefactor trace her development as an independent thinker and writer. Its sequel, Dear Enemy (1915), also told in letters, follows the progress of Judy’s former orphanage now run by her friend Sallie McBride, who struggles to give her young charges hope and a new life. Full of irrepressible female characters that both recall Alcott’s Jo March and anticipate the popular heroines of contemporary literature, Webster’s novels are witty, heartfelt, and delightfully modern."
- Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country , Caroline Stevermer - "In 1817 in England, two young cousins, Cecilia living in the country and Kate in London, write letters to keep each other informed of their exploits, which take a sinister turn when they find themselves confronted by evil wizards." Sequels: The Grand tour and The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After.
- The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder - "The Ides of March, first published in 1948, is a brilliant epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar's Rome. Thornton Wilder called it 'a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic.' Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history's most magnetic, elusive personalities."
- Fairy Ring, Martine Desjardins - "In 1895, the arctic explorer Captain Ian Ryder has let his house in Blackpool on the Nova Scotia coast to the recently married Clara Weiss, who is about to become the compass of a social circle far too intimate for its own good. Set in the year Freud published his ground-breaking essay on hysteria, this is a compulsively readable, beautiful and dark novel of personal relations so close they verge on the incestuous, and desires so vast they approach the cold crystalline purity of the archetype."
- More than Love Letters, Rosy Thornton - "When Richard Slater receives a letter of complaint from one of his constituents, a Margaret Hayton, he merely responds with his standard letter of empty promises. Clearly, this woman is insane and must be avoided at all costs. But she will not be dismissed so easily, and when Richard finally sets eyes on the 'twenty-something vision in stone-washed denim,' he risks losing his heart, his head, and quite possibly his political career."
- Dear Exile : The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean , Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery - "College roommates Kate Montgomery and Hilary Liftin went in different directions after they graduated. Kate married and went to Kenya with her husband to teach with the Peace Corps, while Hilary attempted to conquer Manhattan. This book consists of their letters during the year they were separated."
You'll have to forgive me for nabbing descriptions of the books from Amazon. As most of these are completely new to me I had to look them up and thought it might be nice to share a line or two about each books' contents. I'm looking forward to looking for these books. Many thanks for all the wonderful suggestions! And for more ideas, check out Melanie's list, too.