Epistolary Novel - Later Works

Later Works

Epistolary novels have made several memorable appearances in more recent literature:

• John Cleland's early erotic novel Fanny Hill (1748) is written as a series of letters from the titular character to an unnamed recipient.
• 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 pre-revolution Russia.
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Brontë is written in the form of letter from the narrator to his friend with the main heroine's diary inside it.
• 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 a certain moonstone might reflect poorly on the family, if misunderstood, and therefore he was collecting the true story. This is an unusual element. 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 Jimenez (1874) is writing in three sections, with the first and third being a series of letters, while the middle part is a narration by an unknown observer.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) uses not only letters and diaries, but also dictation cylinders and newspaper accounts. While the novel draws on the epistolary form, by the end of the story it reduces it, along with other media, to a monstrous "mass of typewriting".
• Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs (1912)
• Haki Stërmilli's novel If I Were a Boy (1936) is written in the form of diary entries which documents the life of the main protagonist.
• Kathrine Taylor's Address Unknown (1938) was an anti-Nazi novel in which the final letter is returned as "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) was 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.
• Theodore Sturgeon's short novel, Some of Your Blood (1961), consists of letters and case-notes relating to the psychiatric treatment of a non-supernatural vampire.
• Saul Bellow's novel Herzog (1964) is largely written in letter format. These are both real and imagined letters, written by the protagonist Moses E. Herzog to family members, friends and famous figures.
• The Anderson Tapes (1969, 1970) by Lawrence Sanders is a novel told primarily in the form of transcripts of tape recordings.
• Stephen King's novel Carrie (1974) is written in an epistolary structure, through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, and excerpts from books.
• The Fan, published in 1977 and written by Bob Randall, is a thriller in epistolary form.
• In John Barth's epistolary work, Letters (1979), the author interacts with characters from his other novels.
• Alice Walker employed the epistolary form in The Color Purple (1982). The 1985 film adaptation echoed the form by incorporating into the script some of the novel's letters, which the actors spoke as monologues.
• John Updike's S. (1988) is an epistolary novel consisting of the heroine's letters and transcribed audio recordings.
• Avi used this style of constructing a story in Nothing But the Truth (1991), where the plot is told using only documents, letters, and scripts.
• Ronald Munson used an epistolary style in "Fan Mail" (1994), where the entire plot is told using e-mails, letters, transcripts of television shows and telephone conversations, faxes, and interactions with a computer program called ELIZA.
• Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding was written in the form of a personal diary.
• Last Days of Summer (1998) by Steve Kluger was 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.
• Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan (2001) uses letters and journal entries to weave the story of a middle-aged woman in the 1930s.
• The Boy Next Door (2002) by Meg Cabot is a romantic comedy novel dealt with entirely by emails sent among the characters.
• The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot is a series of ten novels written in the form of diary entries.
• Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002) by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler uses letters, documents, and other scripts to construct the plotline.
• Several of Gene Wolfe's novels are written in the forms of diaries, letters, or memoirs.
• We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003) is a monologic epistolary novel, written as a series of letters to the narrator's husband Franklin.
• In the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly novels, out-of-context text messages, usually humorous, mark transitions between sections.
• Griffin and Sabine by artist Nick Bantock is a love story written as a series of hand painted postcards and letters.
• The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer - 2004
• Where Rainbows End (alternately titled "Rosie Dunne" or "Love, Rosie" in the US) (2004) by Cecelia Ahern is written in the form of letters, emails, instant messages, newspaper articles, etc.
• Uncommon Valour (2005) by John Stevens, the story of two naval officers in 1779, is primarily written in the form of diary and log extracts.
• 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.
• My Sister's a Pop Star (2006), I'm SO Not a Pop Star (2008), and the third book in the series, My Life on TV (2010), by American author Kimberly Greene, use blog posts to move the plot along and introduce key changes in the protagonist's thinking.
• 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.
• Punkzilla by Adam Rapp (2009)
• Super Sad True Love Story (2010) by Gary Shteyngart
• Burley Cross Postbox Theft (2010) by Nicola Barker is a polylogic epistolary novel consisting of a bundle of 26 undelivered letters stolen from a mailbox in the titular village of Burley Cross.
• Midnight Movie (2011) by Tobe Hooper and Alan Goldsher is written as a series of emails, Tweets, texts, and oral histories.
• The children's book Regarding the Fountain by Kate Klise is told through letters and newspaper clippings.
• The Antagonist (2011) by Lynn Coady is a monologic epistolary novel conveyed through increasingly unanswered email messages.
• Letters In Cardboard Boxes (2011) by Abby Slovin is written as a narrative alongside a series of letters exchanged between an eccentric grandmother and her granddaughter as the protagonist experiences loss.
• The Dark Legend Dossier (2012) by James Churchill takes the form of a dossier featuring diary entries, newspaper cuttings and other documents alongside a serialized style narrative whereby each part is told from the perspective of a different character.
• Aeternum Ray (2012) by Tracy R. Atkins is a speculative fiction novel formatted as a series of letters chronicling an immortal man’s life from 1979-2216. The thirty-one letters, from father to son, form a memoir of the technological-singularity.