Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about collecting literature, including letters and postcards.
The article mentioned a Sotheby's auction earlier this summer in which the collection of letters and a manuscript by David Foster Wallace sold for $125,000. The original estimate for the sale had been $10,000 to $15,000.
It seems that those who collect such things are quite serious about it.
Even if you don't have the funds to collect such pricy papers, you can go to sites, such as Sotheby's and look at many of the items online. Other online collections are found at universities, such as the University of Houston, which has many items for viewing in its Digital Library.
Collecting letters and other papers can be almost addicting, I'm sure. If you love ephemera, history, etc., it can be difficult to imagine such items lost to world forever.
Do you collect or save letters, postcards or other papers?
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| This letter from Letter from Henry Cowing to Mary Jones, wife of the last president of the Republic of Texas, is in the University of Texas' Digital Library. |
I was saddened when my mother shredded 40+ years of correspondence with her brother.... She said that she needed the space.. The letters didn't take up that much room... A personal history gone. She kept old photographs often enclosed in the letter... I know a picture can tell a story of 1000 words, but words are needed to tell those who do not know, who/what is in the picture.
ReplyDeleteI save all of my letters and I have a trunk full of correspondence that began in the early 1970's and is still going on. I also collect letters and vintage postcards of strangers. I especially like to seek out old journals from people I don't know. It's fascinating to me to read about how other people have lived and what was going on in their world during a specific time period.
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