Letters From Women by Lucinda Epperson


Letters. Over the years a literary treasure has been unearthed in books based on letters written by women. These not only describe personal day-to-day activities, but vividly illustrate the times in which these letter writers lived. Several of these books also feature women that are bravely exploring what to them, as well as the reader, are uncommon worlds.

In the recently written Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden we are taken into the summer of 1916. Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, leave their comfortable homes in Auburn, New York for teaching jobs in the wilds of northeastern Colorado. Bored by their society luncheons, charity work, and the young men who court them, they relocate to a remote mountaintop schoolhouse. Their friends and families are shocked. Not only are they leaving safe, comfortable lives for the unstable wild west, but no women within their social circle were even known to have ever been “hired.”

Woodruff and Underwood took the new railroad over the Continental Divide and made their way by wagon to the tiny settlement of Elkhead, Colorado. There they lived with a family of homesteaders. They rode several miles to school each day on horseback, sometimes in blizzards, to teach students in tattered clothes and shoes. And, in the midst of all of this, no one prepared them for the local men, many who were considering them as prospective brides.

In their buoyant letters home, these two women capture the voices and stories of pioneer women. They paint vivid pictures of brave and endearing school children, as well as of the many memorable characters met throughout their adventure.

Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter of Dorothy Woodruff and executive editor of the New Yorker, discovered the letters of these young letter writers, reconstructed the women’s journey, and created an exhilarating saga of two intrepid young women who left “nothing daunted.” Woodruff and Underwood were promised the adventure of a lifetime. They and Wickenden’s readers find that and so much more.

Other books also use intimate, unpublished family letters and documents to create detailed excursions into another world. Sisters of Fortune by Jehanne Wake and Stella Tillyand’s Aristocrats are two of these.

Aristocrats introduces the reader to the Lennox sisters, great-granddaughters of a king, daughters of a cabinet minister, and wives of politicians and peers. Through their letters to each other, Tillyand’s history transports us into a world of personal and political passions, forming an astute biography of the privileged eighteenth-century woman. Called “a work of …surpassing brilliance” when first published in 1994, Aristocrats introduces the reader to a very uncommon woman’s world.

The recent (2010) publishing of Sisters of Fortune also features the letters of sisters, this time there are four, living in an unusual world. Descended from prominent first settlers of Maryland and brought up by their wealthy grandfather Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Canton sisters were well educated, charming, unusually independent, fascinated by politics, clever with money, and very romantic. As gripping as a historical novel, it is also a meticulously researched history. One example of its detail is the information it shares regarding women and their managing of finances. Where most rich women of the period were content with a passive role regarding finances, Wake shows how the Caton sisters managed investment portfolios and were active and informed players on the domestic and foreign markets. And, we see that they constantly used their social connections not only to win political or diplomatic appointments for their husbands or relatives but also for information on investments.

Sisters of Fortune is a transatlantic celebration of sisterhood and a gripping and fascinating tale as well.

Books based on letters from women offer excellent reading and introductions into the uncommon worlds these women inhabited.