800 Years of Women's Letters Author:Olga Kenyon Olga Kenyon has unearthed eight centuries of lost voices, easily proving her assertion 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 Restoration playwright-spy Aphra Behn to Madame de S?vign?--most of us would be hard put to volunteer an... more »y solid information. Kenyon organizes these letters by theme, including friendship, childhood and education, war work, and political skills, and the juxtapositions are enlightening. "Housekeeping and Daily Life" features the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who writes of being forced to leave her two-year-old tied to a chair while she searches Moscow for provisions; Queen Elizabeth I, who bemoans the bad shape Buckingham Palace is in; and Hannah Cullwick, a servant who anatomizes England's sharp class divisions, circa 1864. Cullwick writes of toiling in the kitchen while the upper classes lord it upstairs: "But it's always so with ladies and servants and of course there is a difference cause their bringing up is so different--servants may feel it sharply and 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." -- Amazon.com Books« less