Love Letters of Great Men

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure. This edition is edited and introduced by publisher Ursula Doyle.

From the private papers of Mark Twain and Mozart to those of Robert Browning and Nelson, Love Letters of Great Men collects together some of the most romantic letters in history.

For some of these great men, love is a ‘delicious poison’ (William Congreve); for others, ‘a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music’ (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one’s heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert). Every shade of love is here, from the exquisite eloquence of Oscar Wilde and the simple devotion of Robert Browning to the wonderfully modern misery of the Roman Pliny the Younger, who loses himself in work to forget how much he misses his beloved wife, Calpurnia.

Taken together, these Love Letters of Great Men show that perhaps men haven’t changed so very much over the last 2,000 years; passion, jealousy, hope and longing are all described here – as is the simple pleasure of sending a letter to, and receiving one from, the person you love most.

About the Authors

The most heartfelt romantic letters from: Pliny the Younger, King Henry VIII, William Congreve, Richard Steele, George Farquhar, Alexander Pope, David Hume, Laurence Sterne, Denis Diderot, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lord Nelson, Robert Burns, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Napoleon Bonaparte, Daniel Webster, Ludwig van Beethoven, William Hazlitt, Lord Byron, John Keats, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Darwin, Alfred de Musset, Robert Schumann, Robert Browning, Gustave Flaubert, Walter Bagehot, Mark Twain, William F. Testerman, Charles Stewart Parnell, Oscar Wilde, Pierre Curie, G. K. Chesterton, Captain Alfred Bland, Regimental Sergeant-Major James Milne and Second Lieutenant John Lindsay Rapoport.