It should be no surprise to devotees of the TV series that In a notable scene from this current movie one of the female characters ends up in bed with one of the male characters (no names, no spoilers). But there is is an unexpected happening as they begin to read from a book of collected love-letters. In a movie full of products like Prada, Louis Vuitton, Skyy vodka, and Mercedes Benz, this book brought out the librarian in me. But is the book really a collection of love-letters, or it just a prop department book camouflaged to suit the requirements of the plot? I’m afraid I came up with no answer. But my curiosity was stirred by the question to see what sorts of similar collections might exist at our library.

A subject search for love-letters on the NPL online catalog brings up seven volumes. Several of these are devoted to a unique love correspondence, but others are anthologized collections similar to the one in the movie.

So why not spend an intimate evening at home and peruse one of these books. Sip a bit of Skyy vodka and read, for example, one of Napoleon’s letters to Josephine from the beautiful book Love Letters: An Illustrated Anthology compiled by Antonia Fraser:
“I have not spent a day without loving you; I have not spent a night without embracing you; I have not so much as drunk a single cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain separated from the moving spirit of my life.”

Or select from the same book one of Franz Liszt's love-letters to Marie d’ Agoult:
“My heart overflows with emotion and joy! I do not know what heavenly languor, what infinite pleasure permeates it and burns me up. It is as if I had never loved!!! Tell me whence uncanny disturbances spring, these inexpressible foretastes of delight, these divine tremors of love. Oh! All this can only spring from you, sister, angel, woman, Marie!”

Another anthology of love-letters at our library is The Book of love: writers and their love letters selected by Cathy N. Davidson. Our books devoted to unique love correspondences are:

Letters of a Portuguese nun / Myriam Cyr by Myriam Cyr,

Dear Scott, dearest Zelda: the love letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, and introduced by their granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan,

Dear, dear Brenda: the love letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus edited by Gerald Seth Sindell,

How do I love thee? The love-letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett selected and introduced. by V. E. Stack,

La nouvelle Heloise. Julie; or, The new Eloise; letters of two lovers, inhabitants of a small town at the foot of the Alps translated and abridged by Judith H. McDowell.