Genre Reading Group Online: Novels of Correspondence
to
O’Neal Library 50 Oak Street , Mountain Brook, Alabama 35213
Register your email to receive a link to the Zoom meeting the morning of the event.
Novels of correspondence, or epistolary novels, are novels primarily written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings, and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic documents such as recordings, radio, blogs, and emails have also come into use.
(from britannica.com) "An epistolary novel is told through the medium of letters written by one or more of the characters. Originating with Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), the story of a servant girl’s victorious struggle against her master’s attempts to seduce her, it was one of the earliest forms of novel to be developed and remained one of the most popular up to the 19th century. The epistolary novel’s reliance on subjective points of view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel."
Looking for inspiration? Visit https://bookriot.com/2016/08/24/100-epistolary-novels-from-the-past-and-present/
The Genre Reading Group selects topics and readers select their own book within the topic. Reading choices are shared and discussed in a roundtable format. For more information, contact Holley at 205.445.1117 or hwesley@eolib.org.