From revenge-seeking Roman curse tablets to Jane Austen’s witty, acerbic letters, writing messages has long been a powerful way of connecting people across geographic location and time. With digital messages now dominating our written conversations, is it time to rediscover the beauty and meaning of handwritten letters? Naomi Nelson takes stock…
Get your pens and envelopes ready, because World Letter Writing Day is almost here! This celebration of handwritten notes, started by Australian author Richard Simpkin, is this year marked on Monday 1 September. But the fact that letter-writing needs an organised celebration raises the question: are letters a relic of a bygone era, or a neglected art? And what is it that connects the city of Bath to the history of letter writing?
Ever since what is believed to be the first letter sent by the Persian Queen Atossa in 500 bc, letters have played a huge role in shaping society – from helping people communicate to documenting history. But in recent years our way of communicating has shifted. You can Whatsapp, Snapchat and iMessage from anywhere and everywhere; through walls, over borders and across time-zones. The idea of communication as thoughts passed from one individual’s brain to another now truly knows no bounds of time or space.
Despite, or perhaps because of, how easy it is to stay in touch digitally, there has been a drastic decline in physical letter writing. A 2022 survey found that a third of children in the UK had never written a letter, and another in 2025 said that 70% of UK adults had not written a letter within the last year. Meanwhile, in Denmark, the state postal company will no longer deliver letters from the end of 2025; and postal services like Germany’s Deutsche Post are facing severe job cuts.
So why should we care about this decline? Firstly, there’s something uniquely special about holding a letter that’s been sent by a loved one – something that a quick text message cannot replicate. Psychologists observe that people tend to display ‘magical thinking’ and often believe that individuals transfer their ‘essence’ to objects they touch. In this way, handwritten letters allow a sense of physical closeness, even if you are far from your loved ones.
In addition, pen and paper allow an individual to channel their unique creativity and authenticity. Handwriting and off-the-cuff doodles are glimpses of a person’s personality. Think of the beautiful letters adorned with striking doodles and hieroglyphics left behind by many artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Frida Kahlo.
In addition, letters feel more intentional. Letters are sealed and sent out as a message in a bottle, immune to any scrutiny or retraction by the sender. They require great care and effort and produce a tangible keepsake: perhaps I am a hopeless sentimentalist, but I keep anything handwritten a loved one has ever sent me.
Bath has many special connections to letter writing. Jane Austen, one of its most famous residents, wrote a vast number of letters in her lifetime. These show her as the witty and vibrant figure we know from her novels, but also pull back the curtain a little. In one, she jokes, “I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy…my tears flow”, and in another, she tells her sister Cassandra, “I hope you are all alive after our melancholy parting yesterday.” These snippets, although with her characteristic nimble wit, give us a glimpse into her private life beyond the well-known fiction.
Sadly the majority of Austen’s letters were burned by Cassandra, possibly to protect Jane’s reputation. Some say her sharp social observations were too bold for their time. This act of censorship has been the basis of much historical discussion and was showcased in the recent BBC series Miss Austen. Such a destruction also raises questions of privacy and legacy: what do we owe to history, and what do we keep private?
Left: ‘Frontispiece of Mansfield Park’ (by Jane Austen), vol 2. (Fanny) returning to her seat to finish a note, illustrator C.E. Brock
Bath doesn’t just have a history of letter authorship – it also played a big part in how they were delivered. In the early 1700s, Bath’s postmaster Ralph Allen helped revolutionise the postal system. He made it faster and more efficient by cutting out the need to route all post through London. He even introduced the ‘signed for’ delivery system – so you can thank him next time you’re trying to scribble your signature on a postman’s tablet.
Charles Darwin also sent letters to a Bath-based naturalist named Leonard Jenyns. These letters show Darwin working through his early ideas on evolution – questioning, refining and sometimes stumbling. They give us a rare look at a world-changing theory as it was still taking shape. The BRLSI collection in Bath, housed at 16-18 Queen Square, includes four volumes of correspondence between Jenyns and Darwin, and with other men of science.
Even in Roman times, people in Bath were writing things down to get their message across, although in a different form to how we understand letters today. The Roman Baths are home to ‘curse tablets’, messages inscribed on thin sheets of lead as smooth as paper, which were used to request the return of stolen goods, inciting curses from the gods if this wish was not fulfilled. These ancient notes are much more raw than the ponderings on social relationships that came later, but they show how long humans have been putting their thoughts in writing.
These stories of Bath show how letters help us understand history – not just big events, but everyday life and relationships. Another powerful letter form in history has been the love letter. Many are uber-famous, including those between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and between Napoleon and Josephine. Love letters never fail to capture our interest: there is something gloriously, deliciously voyeuristic about reading them. They are thoughts and feelings meant for a singular other poured down in ink. This fascination continues today: think of the Tumblr (and now TikTok) fame of Alex Turner’s letter to Alexa Chung. It might feel intrusive to read such letters, but it has allowed us to chart human relationships, to understand how people loved, fought and connected across time.
In the end, letters are conspicuously beautiful and one of the most personal, heartfelt ways we can connect. They may not be in competition with digital messages, but they offer something different. In fact a 2022 study on communication by Ureña Carrion found that letter-writing and texting had surprising similarities, in terms of the rhythms of conversation, following a pattern of turn-taking, and the focus on the people who matter most. Perhaps, then, the adage that humans have been the same irrational beings since the dawn of time is true. We’re still lovesick, sentimental and eager to be understood. Time to dust off our pens and write to each other by hand to keep this art alive.
Fun facts about letter-writing
In the 18th century, cheat-sheet guides to love letter writing were published to help people along, such as The Lover’s Instructor, or the Whole Art of Courtship Rendered Plain and Easy.
Scholar Noel Osselton identified that 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson used different spelling styles in his public and private writing. This is like code-switching, where people change how they speak or write depending on their audience – except Johnson was switching his spelling, not his language!
Napoleon reportedly waited three weeks before opening his mail, based on the idea that most of it would then not require a response: a tactic many of us use with email inboxes.
A letter with two separate sets of writing, one written over the other at right-angles, was a technique used in the 19th century to save on expensive postage charges, and to save paper.
Novelist Anthony Trollope, when working for the Post Office in the 1850s, suggested the use of ‘letter-receiving boxes’ as he had seen in Paris, leading to the use of post boxes on street corners.
Letter writing can be therapeutic: the practice of writing letters has been successfully harnessed to promote self-esteem and aid coping with grief.