Fictional Letters

I have identified one literary form that is marginal, if not non-existent, in Poul Anderson's works: the fictional letter.

The framing passages of "The Problem of Pain" are part of a private correspondence. Might a first person short story like "The Bitter Bread" be read as a letter from its narrator? The third Maurai story, "Windmill," is, if not a letter, then a report to an admiralty.

Closely related to private correspondences are private journals. (Indeed, some journal writers might begin: "Dear Diary...") Anderson's "Wings of Victory" and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy" are extracts from private journals.

BOOK THREE of James Blish's They Shall Have Stars is introduced by a letter from one character to another, dated 4th January 2020 - in the future.

Dracula is related through letters, diary entries and newspaper reports.

Fitzwilliam Darcy writes an explanatory letter to Elizabeth Bennet.

One master of the fictional correspondence is CS Lewis:

The Screwtape Letters

Letters To Malcolm:Chiefly On Prayer

Out Of The Silent Planet: Post-Script

Screwtape writes to Wormwood.

Lewis writes to Malcolm.

Ransom writes to Lewis.

I plan to reread Malcolm in order to compare Lewis' account of prayer with my practice of meditation and his philosophical idealism with my materialism.