A continuing correspondence between literature and the written hand.

Each month, Letters from the Archive begins with an essay and an invitation to read, copy, reflect, and respond by hand.

Each Archive remains open for correspondence. You may respond to the current issue or return to any earlier Archive.

Letters from the Archive

Archive #0004 — Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray": The Portrait in the Locked Room
Archive #0004 — Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray": The Portrait in the Locked Room
A young man stays beautiful while his portrait records everything he does. Archive #0004 opens Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray: a story about the record we keep of... Read more...
Edgar Allan Poe beside an illustration of the House of Usher
Archive #0003 Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher": The Horror Within
October in New England changes the hours we spend indoors. Evening arrives before the day’s work is finished. Windows begin to reflect the room instead of the garden, and familiar... Read more...
Frankenstein 1818 title page, portrait of Mary Shelley, and Frankenstein manuscript for Archive #0002
Archive #0002 — Frankenstein and the Responsibility of Creation
More than two centuries after Mary Shelley imagined a young man standing before the living consequence of his own ambition, Frankenstein still asks an unsettling question: what do we owe... Read more...
Antique writing desk with books, handwritten pages, quill and globe illustrating Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Gothic literature
Archive #0001 — Why Dracula Refuses to Die
Why does Dracula continue to haunt our imagination more than a century after its publication? In the inaugural edition of Letters from the Archive, we explore the enduring legacy of... Read more...