Interesting Perspective on Letter Writing

Author Elizabeth A. Drew (1887-1965), not to be confused with the modern-day journalist and author Elizabeth Drew (born in 1935), wrote about letter writing in at least two books, "The Enjoyment of Literature," published in 1935, and "The Literature of Gossip," published in 1964.

Here's a quote from "The Enjoyment of Literature":

It is the directness and immediacy of the appeal of letters and journals which make them so dear to the reader. Perhaps it is because letters, above all forms of writing, spring from the affections. Their writers are, in general, single-minded, disinterested folk who pursue their occupation partly from the simple wish to give pleasure to others, partly from their sheer love of what they are doing. They have no thought of fame or futurity, and none of the conscious, unswerving quest of the artist for perfection of form. They write at a particular day and hour for the eyes of a particular reader, and their creations are the literature of leisure, of love and of friendship, the literature of intimacy and of inessentials.

There is, moreover, a feeling of fragility and destructibility about letters which belongs to no other form of writing, and which gives them a value of their own. Books are sturdy things, which soon change the impermanence of manuscript for the persistence of print, and remain thenceforth invulnerable. But letters can be hidden for years, for centuries even, at the mercy of a chance accident, and survive or are destroyed by the operations of fortune.

She goes on to describe in detail a variety of letters, some dating back to the 1600s. "The Enjoyment of Literature" can be downloaded from the "Internet Archive" at no charge, if you're interested in reading more.

Note: It looks like several Internet sources attribute a quote from "The Literature of Gossip" to the current-day Elizabeth Drew, but I'm not sure that's correct.