People used to write letters to each other all the time. They would share their news, their feelings, their plans - and beyond these, their reflections on the timeless questions of life. Letters were an externalisation of the internal, stemming from a time far back when the private thoughts of a person had otherwise little opportunity for expression. Letters transcended time and space, sickness and isolation, and the social limitations of meeting and speaking in person. We learn so much about historical persons and their relationships by reading their personal letters; in fact countless books are simply compilations of these letters, sent from one lover to another, from one poet to another, from one sister to another. Letters are beautiful treasuries of language, heartfelt and unedited, annotated and illustrated, intended to be read by one or two pairs of eyes only. They are a far cry from pieces of writing today, crafted out of multiple drafts and autocorrections, that are easily perused or circulated at a click by millions of readers all over the world. But are private letters really a lost art? Or have they simply evolved?
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