Les Plus Belles Lettres de Femmes by Laure Adler & Stefan Bollmann

 It's one of the most beautiful, classy book I have seen this year; a perfect gift: inspiring; a precious and tender object that will let you reflect and at the same time appreciate the feminine universe; I am speaking of Les Plus Belles Lettres de Femmes

by Laure Adler & Stefan Bollmann, recently published by Flammarion.

Perfect for a present as written before, in particular if you have some romantic friends in love for correspondence, and the dear old times, this book is richly, warmly illustrated, for permitting us the discovery of the several couples involved in writing! Drawings, pictures, paintings will amplify the power of written words. The result is a visual book on letters where the feminine universe is seen in its globality.

Divided in sections, the authors analyzes the various meaning of femal correspondents during the past centuries. The modernity is seen, correctly as an impersonal, historical moment, where SMS, e-mails are sent without going too deep.

Writing a letter was different. It was a anctivity that involved body and mind.

Correspondence meant reflection, a moment in which a woman became the master of her existence; a private instants in which she was free; free from social cages, free from constrictions and restrictions, but also free to express what she wanted, she wished, she desidered because the other person, the one who would have received the letter would have been for sure someone interested in reading her words; the woman was free to express intensily and beautifully well her thoughts, and her feelings.  Written words put in order her mind, and for whatever reason a woman wrote, she wrote expressing herself.

Divided in five sections, you will see: Lettres d'Amour, Lettres d'Amitié, Lettres D'Amour Maternelle et Filial, Lettres de Femme d'Influence for ending with Lettres de Voyageuses. 

In the past receiving and answering letters was, in particular for men and women of culture, an intense, daily activity.

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning for example exchanged in a very short time 537 letters before to decide of spending the rest of their existence together, living at long in Florence. 

One of the most violent, passionate love-story in letters, was the one of George Sand and Alfred de Musset. Very known is the relationship by Juliette Drouet with Victor Hugo, a feeling this one long like the existences of the protagonists where letters of great intensity and pathos were echanged by the protagonists. 

Frida Kahlo lived an intense love-story per years with the photographer Nickolas Muray. But more, we will also read the story of the correspondence between Marie Antoinette and De Polignac, the one of Marie Therese with Marie Antoinette, while Olympe de Gouges suggested to Marie Antoinette of supporting her cause; possibility of divorce for women, suppression of religious marriage, entrance of ladies in political life, and of course sex equality; a revolutionary woman for that years, we are in 1791! You will also read on Colette in contact with her friends, and what had to say Simone Weil, or what wrote Simone de Beauvoir at Jean-Paul Sartre or Karen Blixen at her family.

It's a book, this one, that leaves to you complete freedom. You can jump in a section or in another indulging in a love-story correspondence; discovering the worries of a mother for a daughter, impressions of travellers, correspondence between friends and more. This book is like opening many, different, fascinating doors. All populated by amazing women!

Impressive, elegant.

Highly recommended.

I thank Flammarion for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori