The Letter Exchange

In Canada a postal employee strike has halted mail pickup and delivery. But does that include letters to and from the big guy at the North Pole? Not for kids in this city.

A few centuries ago, when letters were the main way of communicating with anyone not physically present, mail delivery (whether by post or servant) could happen multiple times a day, it was not unusual for someone to write thousands of letters over a lifetime. Even today that's not an unreachable amount - one letter a week for 20 years would be a thousand. But here's a story about a woman who's apparently written thousands of letters - to strangers - in the last 4 years or so.

Here's a recent article about a couple of college students and a professor who continue the practice of writing personal letters even in the digital age.

A newly published book looks at the result of a program that connected women in the Soviet Union and the United States through letters - originally for political purposes during World War II, but the letters continued for some time afterwards. Despite official censorship, they managed to discuss political topics in an oblique way - by sharing details about their lives, writing about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and discussing how they were raising children.

A couple of entries ago we had a link to an article about a letter with only a very generic address that still managed to get to its recipient. Today the postal services have very specific instructions on how they prefer mail to be addressed - approved abbreviations, even how many spaces to leave between parts of the address; and "Insufficient Address" is one of the labels that can be attached to returned mail. In the past, however, such detailing of the address could be a social mistake, as mentioned in this article.

Over the years there have been many books about pen pals, some of which have become well-known. But written fiction is not the only medium for exploring the friendships that can develop between correspondents - here's a play on the same topic.

Have you ever had a letter you sent come back marked "Undeliverable as Addressed"? Probably not if was to be delivered by these posties.

The world's postmasters all have different situations. Some run large busy post offices, some oversee smaller operations with a more leisurely pace. This one, however, will have a rather unique situation - when the tourists' mail is taken care of, there will be penguins to count.

Here's a blog article from India about the special place postcards played in the blogger's life, including her current discovery of World Postcard Day and the memories it brought forth.

Letters have always played a part in spy escapades, as shown by some of the ways that various kings and queens managed to send information to compatriots secretly. But it wasn't just royalty - here's an exhibit of letters that in one way or another involved spies in the late 1700s.

Ever write a letter and get ready to mail it, only to find you've mislaid the envelope you meant to use? No problem - letterlock it. Here's a site devoted to that process, including many different ways to turn a letter into its own envelope, as well as information on the modern methods for reading a locked letter without opening it, thus preserving its (often fragile) original condition.

In Issue 64 we had an article about a museum in California that encouraged visitors, especially children, to write letters about the sea, with an emphasis on conservation. They're not the only museum with a writing program, however - here's one in Canada where visitors can write postcards and have them mailed by a train engineer.

From time to time museums and historical societies have exhibits of letters from the past - sometimes letters to or from particular people, and sometimes letters about a time period, a historical event, or a place. This one focuses on the history of an Illinois county, and if you click the link near the bottom of the text, there are a couple of online exhibits that can be explored.

Everyone knows that dogs can sometimes be a hindrance to the delivery of mail, and over the years we've had blog entries about the occasional problems with cats and large birds. But snails?

Recently we've seen some articles by museums and exhibit sites about writing letters. Here's two of them - the first is short and breezy (and unlike in many articles, the link to buy things doesn't go to Amazon!), and the second is a slightly longer article about the letters written by Swedish immigrants to the U.S., with excerpts from some of the letters that survive.

Ever read a letter from someone famous - an author, politician, etc. - in a "Collected Letters of..." book and wonder if the publisher did any editing of the letter? It's common for such books to standardize punctuation and often spelling, and sometimes divide long letters into paragraphs - not to mention leaving out personal chat that might be the most interesting part of the letters. Sometimes an image of the original letter can be found on the web, but if not, there's another option for some of them - buying the letter.

This article starts out with some demographics about who in Great Britain sends postcards, but then morphs into a brief history of postcards, with pictures of early German postcards and a display of postcards of unspecified date in Paris, many of them featuring the Eiffel Tower.

Here's a recent comic strip based on the well-known decline in the volume of letters being sent through the mail in recent years. Thanks to Lex #13494 for letting us know about it.

Here's a story about a woman who collects historic comments people made about their experiences in Arizona - on postcards. Her blog showcases the stories of some of the postcards and the people who sent (and sometimes received) them.

It can be frustrating when a long-term correspondent stops writing, and there's no indication of why; it can be especially concerning when the person was known to have had health issues. Sometimes there are ways to find out more - in this case, the finding out more happened half a century after the letters stopped.

About 6 years ago we had a blog post about seagulls attacking mail carriers in a city in Wales. That's not the only place where the birds consider postal (and other) deliveries to be a threat to their young during nesting season - here's a current story about the same thing happening in Cornwall.

Collections of historical letters seem to most frequently focus on those of authors, and to some extent politicians. But here's an article about an online exhibit of more than 10,000 letters to and from Sir John Herschel, a 19th century British scientist active in a number of fields.

In the current issue we have an article from 70 years ago about how children whose parents taught them to write thank-you cards for gifts often go on to write letters as adults. Quite coincidentally, shortly before putting the issue in the mail we came across this article about a woman whose mother did just that about a decade earlier, and it encouraged a lifelong focus on writing letters.

Here's a blog from 2017 in which the blogger recounts the scary trips she made as a young child to her family's mailbox in upstate New York in the 1950s, despite the tractor-trailers going by on the highway.

Here's another article about mail being delivered late, not quite through the usual process because the mail carrier drove way off his route - by well over 300 miles - to deliver letters accidentally found from 80 years ago.

Periodically there are articles about mail being delivered way late, by years or decades. Most commonly it's found somewhere and put back into the usual delivery process. In this case, however, the process was one started by whaling ships two or three centuries ago and continued for tourists today, and a slight problem (in the form of an address change) delayed delivery for 33 years.

Back a few years ago when people were suddenly trying to find ways to stay connected without the risk of in-person meeting, one student at the University of Toronto wrote this blog post, with lots of pictures, about her combination of letter-writing and art, often using coffee in (and on!) both.

As we've searched for vintage letters and quotes to include in issues of Lex, we've found that the farther back in time we're looking, the more the available material is mostly from the educated classes who were "literate." That changed over time, sometimes gradually, and sometimes, as this article describes, with a specific impetus for people who had seldom or never written letters to begin doing so.

...in this case, the occasion was Easter in Russia a century or more ago.

The phrase "lost art of letter writing" isn't new - We've seen it in articles and essays dating back to the 19th century, and in recent years it's become a popular topic for columnists. Some of these writings are brief and say roughly the same things, some are longer with more substance, and occasionally there's one that's particularly detailed and extensive, such as this one. (We considered reprinting it in the magazine, but it would be so long that there wouldn't be room for much of anything else.)

Many articles decry the lack of letter activity among young people - but here's a children's book about a sixth grader excited to participate in a pen pal program.

A century or more ago guides to writing letters were common, usually with tips and examples for various types of letters - social, business, condolence, etc. They're still around, sometimes in the form of blog entries such as this one.

Various things can also be done with saved postcards, including using creativity to donate them without violating the privacy of the senders and receivers.

Various things can be done with letters someone has saved for a long time - they can made into a collage, returned to the letter writer's descendants, donated to a historical society (or a museum, especially if the writer was famous) - or they can be projected onto fog...

Articles on mail delivery vehicles over the years are common, and we've featured some of the images in issues of Lex. This article, though, examines the changes in the uniforms of British mail carriers since the 18th century.

Getting information from postcards isn't only for history buffs - here's an article about a school program to get postcards mailed to elementary school students in observance of Reading Month last year. And it even defines what a postcard is for those who've perhaps never received or even seen one!

Many articles over the years have talked about how collections of letters - both the ones from famous people and the ones found in closets and attics - can give a greater understanding of history. But postcards can do that too - both civic and personal history.

In the 1950s school pen pal programs matching students from differing countries were quite common, and it's likely that most matches lasted for a short time and faded away as the kids grew older. But not always, as this article shows.

Through the years people have sent various articles through the mail other than letters, postcards, and traditional packages. (We featured a thong sandal sent to Lex by RubberStampMadness magazine in Issue 15.) Sometimes it's been for the fun of it, and sometimes to test just how far from a traditional "mailpiece" one can get and still have it delivered. A few years ago an example, probably of the first reason, was found in an old house in New Zealand.

During the beginning and height of the pandemic, articles about connecting through mail were quite common, many of them pretty much saying the same basic things. This one, however, which is much more recent, focuses more on the mail.

Here's one that goes way, way beyond all the recent increases in postal systems around the world. But it's not just for any stamp - it's for the one on the envelope (which is also part of the sale) that's the first known mail sent with a stamp. Maybe not the very first one sent, but apparently the oldest one yet found to have survived the years.

Occasionally someone who writes to a famous person - most typically an actor or author, it seems - gets a personal response that turns into a continuing correspondence. In this case, however, the relationship began in person and continues mostly in writing, between a woman in Iowa and China's political leader.

Here's an article about an anthropologist who created his own mail art postcards to tell his granddaughter what he was learning and doing on his research trips.

Occasionally one comes across a report of a letter (more often a postcard) that was delivered late - sometimes by years, sometimes by decades. Here's a report about letters that were "delivered" a bit late, but not read for more than two centuries. And though the title calls them "love letters," they were mostly letters between family members.