The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.
Agnes Repplierreal letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.
Agnes RepplierThis is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
Agnes RepplierWit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
Agnes Repplier[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters?
Agnes Repplier