Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair

by Anna Holmes (Editor), Francine Prose (Foreword)

In this extensively researched collection, editor Anna Holmes has amassed an inspirational, historical, and highly entertaining collection of letters from women across the centuries (both known and unknown, fictional and real). From Heloise (of Abelard and Heloise) in the twelfth century, to writer and co-executive producer of Sex in the City Cindy Chupack in the twenty-first; from mad missives and caustic communiques to downhearted dispatches and sweet send-offs, Hell Hath No Fury is the most comprehensive collection on the shelf of letters from the end of the affair. the tell off, the other man, the just friends, the unrequited, the marriage refusal, the slow fade, the string-along, the you’ve changed, and reams of other romantic rants, ruminations, and reckonings, included here are correspondences from Agnes Von Kurowsky to Ernest Hemingway, Rebecca West to H. G. Wells, Stella Bowen to Ford Maddox Ford, Nina Eliza Pinchback Toomer, mother of Harlem Renaissance writer and philosopher Jean Toomer, to her estranged husband, Dorothy Thompson to Sinclair Lewis, Candida Royalle, adult film star, to an ex, Jennifer Belle, author of Going Down and High Maintenance to an ex, Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane to an ex, Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of What She Saw to an ex, Monica Lewinsky to Bill Clinton, and many more.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Short Stories

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 2002

About the author

Anna Holmes has written and edited for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, InStyle and The New Yorker online. She is the founder of the popular website Jezebel.com and the 2012 recipient of a Mirror Award for Best Commentary. In 2013 her Twitter account was named one of the top 140 Twitter feeds by Time Magazine, at which point she became incredibly self-conscious and stopped tweeting as much. She is the editor of two books, including the Book of Jezebel. She lives in New York.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure why I put this on my list or when, I guess at some point the concept appealed to me. But the truth is breakup letters between people you don’t know are boring. Most are not well written, or full of poetics or thought provoking prose. Though sometimes (rarely) reading a famous authors letters proved interesting. If you’re going to read this at all I suggest skimming. I skipped over most things written before the 20th century, as well as entire chapters that just didn’t interest me.

Some highlights:
Anais Nin’s letter was a little too “the lady doth protest too much” and actually had me wincing in embarrassment for her transparency, but I had to chuckle at, “…a friendship built upon the tomb of an abortion”

“You made me a really awful mix tape with a photo of yourself taped to the outside cover. You were so mad when I told you I had ruined the tape because it got caught in my tape player. You referred to me as an “uncaring” feline. A) it was an accident. B) I am not your cat. There were 3 Neil Diamond songs on that tape. You spent 60 minutes explaining why Neil Diamond is your musical god.“

I really enjoyed the last letter in the Autopsy section, written by a 63 year old woman to her 62 year old ex boyfriend. It was heartfelt, mature, and psychologically sound.

Catherine Texier has an excerpt from her book (in the “The Other Woman” section) about her breakup which I found more entertaining to read because it read more like a story and less like a letter.

Jacqueline Susan, author of Valley of the Dolls, is a real bitch. Her literal Dear John letter in it’s entirety: “Irving, when we were at the Essex House and I had room service and I could buy all my Florence Lustig dresses, I found that I loved you very much, but now that you’re in the army and getting fifty-six dollars a month, I feel that my love for you has waned”

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

great idea, SO boringly executed. where's the female empowerment in this? excerpts were soooo long and whiney and tedious. i wanted a book of articulate women telling lovers of dubious character to go fuck themselves (and why), rather than be forced witness to an uncomfortable series of trite, longwinded misanalyzations from a handful of crossed lovers about what their loves were or should have been. agnes von kurowsky turning down hemingway and anais nin's delightfully scathing character assassination of c.l. baldwin were actually quite worth the read, but this book was ultimately pretty disappointing.

[Rikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something about reading other women's anger, feeling other women's pain, and cackling over other women's exacting of revenge that can be just so goddamn cathartic.

Hell Hath No Fury is at once fun and sobering, a rich trove of snapshots of women's lives and the men who have done them wrong (or were otherwise unsatisfactory), and gives those of us interested in and concerned about it a cultural-anthropological peek into patriarchy and class within certain demographics over the centuries. I've not read every single letter, but I like to crack it open when I'm feeling in need of by-proxy venting, or to have some romantic heartstring pulled, or simply out of the morbid curiosity that fuels lust for gossip.

It's a nice rainy-day (or really any-day) casual reader and would make for a great gift between girlfriends or feminist academic colleagues.

Edit: For those who found difficulty empathizing with the writers for not knowing who they were and felt a bit robbed by the lack of detailed information in the backstory snippets, it really pays to do a little cursory research while reading this--or anything! Googling a name can be pretty revealing, and it can add a lot more substance to one's personal read-through of this collection. There are also reviews finding the letters to be boring, and I assume the majority of these reviewers find particular interest in the shock value and glamour of reality TV; if one is looking for a lot of fast-paced vitriol and vindictiveness within this, one will probably not find it. There are a couple with these qualities, and they're pretty shocking, but on the whole, the messages within a lot of these letters are very subtle and exceptionally artful. One phenomenal example of this is Anne of Cleves' divorce letter to Henry VIII. Appreciation of letters like this requires some historical knowledge and understanding of the political climate at the time, who these people were, the nuances and customs of speech as well as, as an example, what languages Anne and Henry might have originally and most often communicated in, as then the reader will know from what language this letter was originally translated into English.

So, perhaps this collection isn't for everyone, but for those it's for, it's bound to be valuable.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very quick read. My favorite was a one paragraph “dear John” letter from the author of “the valley of the dolls” telling a guy that she liked him when he was rich and likes him significantly less now that he’s in the military and broke

[Alisa Lockman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Haven't had that much regret in picking up a book in awhile.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pretty disappointed by this. The title is misleading: most of them were not furious. The subtitle is misleading: a sizeable chunk of them were from the middle of the affair. Most of them are by artists and have already been published in bios or collected letters, and some of them are fictional and therefore already published in novels. I thought it would be a collection of normal people's angry breakup letters, and it really wasn't.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will confess that I didn't read this book in it's entirity. I did however very thoroughly skim it and picked out only certain letters to read. I think I've had this book checked out from the library before so if I combine the two times I've read it, it's possible I've read the whole thing afterall!

I think everybody has been here at one point in their lives, so in that aspect it was kinda nice to know that you weren't the only scorned woman to write such a letter. But, wow! some of these ladies are really fierce! You'll want to read one such lady's letter that starts on page 126 and runs through page 136. Now this is one vicious lady that I'd be sure to steer clear of!

SPOILER ALERT:
There's also "The cruelest breakup letter ever" that was found on the internet written by a 16 year old (I think). Anyway, I didn't find it to be the cruelest ever. It just seemed more like something a girl of that age, in her position, would write. She throws in at the end that she'd been sleeping with another guy the entire time she was with her despicable boyfriend. I found that part to be particularly interesting because the cause of her break up was the fact that she was pregnant and the boyfriend wanted her to abort the baby. So, IF she was sleeping with the other guy the whole time, how did she know whose baby it was? And by telling the boyfriend that, wouldn't he question the very same thing? Anyway...

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is nothing quite like a break-up letter. Poignant, funny, sad all rolled into one.

Amazon describes it best: The author compiled this anthology of 356 real or fictional letters of love, hatred, anger, disappointment, disgust, and rejection written by women when relationships with their lovers, suitors, or husbands went awry. The anthology is divided into 13 sections, each chronologically arranged, according to types, such as "Marriage Refusal," "Prescriptive Letters," "Goodbye Letter," "Tell-Off," "Dear John," and "Divorce Letter."

[Mizloo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gawd-awful! I'm a history buff, and had a pretty good idea about who 75-80% of the authors were; I even knew the romantic backstory of the ones I recognized, but .... what a slog!

While I appreciated the idea and the research effort, I didn't much care for the tone of the back stories, and having put out the effort required to read 10%, then skim a bit beyond about 25%, I thought it was all was just too dreary to persist.

Bottom line: YAWN!!!

[Jen Peters · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the reviews for this book mentioned that it would probably be an enjoyable read if you actually knew the people writing the letters, and I agree wholeheartedly. There was a short backstory to the letters, but not knowing the writers other than that little snippet made me feel completely uninvested. Who knows what the real story was with these breakups, we get a short one-sided view. I was looking for more drama and didn't find any.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of break-up letters spanning from Ann Boleyn's testament of fidelity for Henry VIII to Molly Jong-Fast's surprisingly humorous missive to a married man, Hell Hath No Fury spans the entire range of female heartache and offers up a feast of letter writing talent. Good to have around if you've ever feared you're the only one to experience any particular neurosis.

[Maria · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am including this in my couldn't do it list even though I actually read about 75% of this book. I think it was better in theory than execution. It sounded like it would be juicy and fun and enlightening and really it was just laborious, dull, full of drivel and...well... frankly not fun.

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not really memorable or awesome. There were a couple of quotable historic passages, but nothing in it was terribly relatable, due to the differing circumstances. It had it's good points, though they were mostly a subjective interest in whatever author/actress was quoted.

[Ariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved some of the older letters from royalty and literary greats, because its humbling to see how romantic angst is so similar across centuries, but the modern letters were less fascinating precisely because of their familiarity.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The break up is a hard path that everyone must cross at some point in life and this book shows how different people handle it. The fictional letters could have been left out they weren't as interesting as the true ones.

[Yolanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish this book. It was too negative and since I didn't know who 99% of the writers were, I couldn't relate to what they were saying.

[Paulina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept was good and quite a few of the letters where entertaining, I felt it dragged on a bit and I started skimming. Worth picking up and skimming over.

[Taleisin (Tales of a Bookwyrm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew there were so many types of break-up letters?!A fabulous read...I'll definitely be buying a copy of this one.

[Shell Dieckhaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking for a great laugh this I the book for you

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few excellent, passionate letters. Others are meh.

[renée odulio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing has made me feel more seen, heard, and felt, than the visceral fury, desolation, desperation, and disgust of these letters written by these women.

[Troy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book...really I did...