Aside from the corporate gimmicks, Valentine's Day is about treasuring love. In the age of digital communication, a handwritten letter is the last thing on anyone’s mind. But the physicality of a page filled with prose straight from the heart makes it an appealing gift.
But of course, writing vulnerable feelings elegantly is a tough task, especially for those who may have never penned anything of this nature before. Toss Chat GPT aside while looking are examples of the greatest love letters of all time to get started.
Finding a place to start
Putting the right words on paper can be a struggle. Take inspiration from George Farquhar and his letter to “Penelope” Oldfield in the 1700s.
He leads with a confession: “If I haven’t begun thrice to write and as often thrown away my pen, may I never take it up again; my head and my heart have been at cuffs about you these two long hours,—says my head, you’re a coxcomb for troubling your noodle about a lady whose beauty is as much above your pretensions as your merit is below her love.” How brave!
Or consider what Robert Burns said to Mrs. Agnes McLehose in 1788, toying with logic and emotion. “The attraction of Love, I find, is in an inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are to one another the stronger is the attractive force: in my system, every milestone that marked my progress from Claridna awakened a keener pang of attachment to her,” he wrote.
A cure to being apart
The love story of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and poet Percy Shelley is a tragic one. The pair eloped, leaving Shelley’s pregnant wife behind. Although Shelley drowned in a sailboat years after they got married, the letters he wrote speak for themselves.
“Know you, my best Mary, that I feel myself, in your absence, almost degraded to the level of the vulgar and impure. I feel their vacant, stiff eyeballs fixed upon me, until I seem to have been infected with their loathsome meaning — to inhale a sickness that subdues me to a languor,” writes Shelley to Godwin days after the death of his wife in 1841. “Oh! those redeeming eyes of Mary, that they might beam upon me before I sleep! Praise my forbearance — oh! beloved one — that I do not rashly fly to you, and at least secure a moment’s bliss.”
Let your heart inspire you
Poet John Keats could easily be considered a die-hard romantic and his many letters to Fanny Brawne are a testament to his unwavering love. Although the pair never married, since Keats died of Tuberculosis, Brawne wore the engagement ring until the very end. Their feelings for each other inspired much of his work, like this particular letter from summer morning in 1891.
“I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days — three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain,” he wrote.
A trip down memory lane
Take yourself back to the start, keeping the words grounded in what happened, as German poet Friedrich von Schiller did in his letter to his wife, Charlotte.
“Often, while we were living together, I summoned up all my courage, and went to you with the intention of disclosing the truth — but that courage always deserted me. I thought I discovered selfishness in my wishes; I feared that I was taking none but my own happiness into account, and this is what deterred me,” he penned a year before their marriage. “If I could not be as much to you as you were to me, my grief would have saddened you, and I should have spoiled the beautiful harmony of our friendship by my avowal, should have lost what I already gained — your pure sisterly affection.”
The promise of a future
A love letter isn’t complete without a big hefty promise of a forever, like Lord Byron said to Countess Guccioli in 1819.
“I love you, and you love me, — at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you,” Byron said. “Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide us, — but they never will, unless you wish it.”
Or simply beg them to get back to you soon, as Edgar Allan Poe wrote to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman. “Write soon — soon — oh, soon! — but not much. Do not weary or agitate yourself for my sake. Say to me those coveted words that would turn Earth into Heaven,” he concluded his pages-long letter.