50 Great Love Letters You Have To Read

by Ludwig van Beethoven, Oscar Wilde, Emma Darwin

If a picture speaks a thousand words, a love letter speaks a thousand more . . .

Even in this age of e-mail, faxes, and instant messaging, nothing has ever replaced the power of a love letter. Love letters express the spectrum of our emotions, offering a colorful glimpse into the soul of the writer, and of the writer's beloved. For passionate readers and lovers of words, a letter is irresistible.

List of letters included:

Ludwig van Bethoveen - The Immortal Beloved
Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas
Emma Darwin to Charles Darwin
Vita Sackville-West & Virginia Woolf - Love Letters
Honoré de Balzac to Countess Ewelina Haska
Napoleon Bonaparte to Joséphine de Beauharnais
John Keats to Fanny Brawne
Lord Byron to Teresa Guiccioli
Voltaire to Olympe Dunover
Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn
Leo Tolstoy to Valeria Arsenev
Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet
Nathaniel Hawthorne to Sophia Hawthorne
Jack London to Anna Strunsky
Johann von Goethe to Charlotte von Stein
James Joyce to Nora Barnacle
Abigail Adams to John Adams
Sullivan Ballou to Sarah Ballou
Harriet Beecher Stowe to Her Husband, Calvin
Pietro Bembo to Lucrezie Borgia
Charlotte Brontë to Constantin Heger
Lewis Carroll to Gertrude Chataway
Catherine Of Aragon to Henri VIII
Mark Twain to Olivia Langdon
John Constable to Maria
Oliver Cromwell to Elizabeth Cromwell
Ninon De L'Enclos to One Of Her Lovers
Alfred de Musset to Amantine Aurore Dudevant
Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mary Wollstonecraft to William Godwin
Heloise - Letter to Peter Abelard
Count Gabriel Honore de Mirbeau to Sophie
Lyman Hodge to Mary Granger, His Fiancee
King Henry IV Of France to Gabrielle d'Estrées
Franz Liszt to the Countess d'Agoult
Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his wife Constanze
Thomas Otway to Mrs Barry
Ovid to his wife
Robert Schumann to Clara Wieck
Vincent Van Gogh to Theo, his brother
Tsarina Alexandra to Tsar Nicholas II Of Russia
Laura Lyttleton - Letter to Alfred, Her Husband

Genres: Nonfiction

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

From classical composition, well-known musical works of Ludwig van Beethoven, a partially and then totally deaf German, include symphonies, concertos, sonatas, string quartets, Masses, and one opera and form a transition to romanticism.

Ludwig van Beethoven lived of the period between the late and early eras. A mother in Bonn bore him.

People widely regard Ludwig van Beethoven as one greatest master of construction; sometimes sketched the architecture of a movement and afterward decided upon the subject matter. He first systematically and consistently used interlocking thematic devices or “germ-motives” to achieve long unity between movements. He equally remarkably used many different “source-motives”, which recurred and lent some unity to his life. He touched and made almost every innovation. For example, he diversified and even crystallized, made and brought the more elastic, spacious, and closer rondo. The natural course mostly inspired him, and liked to write descriptive songs.

Ludwig van Beethoven excelled in a great variety of genres, piano, other instrumental for violin, other chamber, and lieder.

People usually divide career of Ludwig van Beethoven into early, middle, and late periods.

In the early period, he is seen as emulating his great predecessors Haydn and Mozart, while concurrently exploring new directions and gradually expanding the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the Early period are the first and second, the first six, the first three piano, and the first twenty piano, the famous “Pathétique” and “Moonlight."

The Middle (Heroic) period began shortly after Beethoven’s personal crisis centering around his encroaching. The period is noted for large-scale expressing heroism and struggle; these many of the most famous. Middle period six (numbers 3 to 8), the fourth and fifth piano, the triple and violin, five (numbers 7 to 11), the next seven piano (the “Waldstein” and the “Appassionata”), and Beethoven’s only Fidelio.

Beethoven’s Late period began around 1816. The Late-period are characterized by intellectual depth, intense and highly personal expression, and formal innovation (for example, the Op. 131 has seven linked movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral forces to the orchestra in the last movement). Many people in his time period do not think these measured up to his first few, and his with J. Reinhold were frowned upon. Of this period also the Missa Solemnis, the last five, and the last five piano.

Reviews

[eli · Rating 3 out of 5]

some parts were fully beautiful and some others where very dull. still very heart warming

[Syikinyunus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who would have guessed Napoleon Bonaparte wrote a gushy love letter? 😅

In malay, we said " dalam hati ada taman..."

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I actually hunted for another book (similarly about love letters of the famous) following a scene from SATC which showed Carrie reading parts of the book to Mr Big - didn't find the book & instead came across this.

Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.. - Ludwig van Beethoven -

I skipped some of the letters, but a few were gold 😘

[Louisa Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was very interesting reading letters to someone’s beloved, or about someone’s beloved. Especially when the letters were written long ago. I think that practice has died out, unfortunately.