Letters of Note was born in 2009 with the launch of lettersofnote.com, a website celebrating old-fashioned correspondence that has since been visited over 100 million times. The first Letters of Note volume was published in October 2013, followed later that year by the first Letters Live, an event at which world-class performers delivered remarkable letters to a live audience.
Since then, these two siblings have grown side by side, with Letters of Note becoming an international phenomenon, and Letters Live shows being staged at iconic venues around the world, from London’s Royal Albert Hall to the theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.
You can find out more at lettersofnote.com and letterslive.com. And now you can also listen to the audio editions of the new series of Letters of Note, read by an extraordinary cast drawn from the wealth of talent that regularly takes part in the acclaimed Letters Live shows.
First published in Great Britain in 2021
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2021 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Shaun Usher, 2021
The right of Shaun Usher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
For permission credits, please see p. 128
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 530 1
eISBN 978 1 78689 531 8
For all the good dogs, but especially . . . Red, Claouey, Maydi, Lola, Liam, Luna, Buddy, Holly and Darth
CONTENTS
01 SHE DOESN’T ANSWER THE PHONE
E.B. White to the ASPCA
02 MY FAITHFUL DOG MIGHT BEAR ME COMPANY
Frances Power Cobbe to The Spectator
Roald Dahl to his mother
Lewis Carroll to Alexandra Kitchin
05 WHY NOT SEND AN ARMY OF BULL PUPS NEXT TIME?
Richard Richardson to the Stars and Stripes
Uncle Lynn to Peggy, Dorothy, Chuck and DIck Jones
Anna Seward to William Newton
George Bush Sr. to the White House staff
Morris Frank to Dorothy Harrison Eustis
10 HIS BARK, AS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, IS TREMENDOUS
Thomas Dick Lauder to William Home Lizars
Zora Neale Hurston to Jean Parker Waterbury
12 HE IS INFINITELY MORE THAN THAT
Helen Keller to Ichiro Ogasawara
Patrick Brontë to Charlotte Brontë
T.H. White to David A. Garnett
Anaïs Nin and Rupert Pole
Francesco Petrarch to Matteo Longo
17 HE IS NOTHING BUT A LITTLE DOGGY
Clara Bow to Dobbie
18 HE PUT THEM ON THE RIGHT SCENT
Bob Hope to Fala Roosevelt
Marcel Proust to Zadig
Charles Lamb and Peter George Patmore
21 A LOVELY LETTER ABOUT BASKET
Gertrude Stein to Alexander Woollcott
22 YOUR HIGHNESSE WOULD LOVE MY DOGGE
Sir John Harington to Prince Henry