An epistolary novel is one in which the story is told through a series of documents. While documents might be news clippings or diary entries — in modern times it could be broadcasts, internet correspondence and social media posts – they began and remain most often as love letters in some fashion. Cárcel de Amor (Prison of Love), c.1485 by Diego de Dan Pedro is the earliest reported epistolary novel. James Howell is credited with writing the first epistolary novel in English, Familiar Letters (1645-50), covering prison life, foreign adventure … and the love of women.
Over the next century, the epistolary novel form gained complexity as the narrative introduced varying viewpoints. This was most notably seen in Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (three volumes in 1684, 1685 and 1687), in which intrigue was created by false letters, and letters delayed or misused by people with bad intentions.
As a genre, the epistolary novel became popular throughout Europe in the 1700s. In England, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740) inspired the “Pamela Bonnet” fashion. The French Les Liaison Dangereuses (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (with original illustration by Jean-Honoré Fragonard) has been adapted to stage, ballet, opera, radio, film and television.
Other notable epistolary novels born in Europe include: Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion (1797 and 1799), Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (considered the first detective novel in the English language, 1868) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
Stateside, the first epistolary novel appeared in 1769: Frances Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague. Since then, our best-known epistolary novels include:
Address Unknown (1938, an early endictment of Nazism) – Katherine Kressman Taylor
Flowers for Algernon (1958) – Daniel Keyes
Carrie (1974) – Stephen King
The Color Purple (1982) – Alice Walker
The Princess Diaries (series, 2000-2015) – Meg Cabot
World War Z (2006) – Max Brooks
Reliance on subjective points of view made the early novels a precursor of the modern psychological novel. The novels I listed are categorized under a variety of genres but they follow the same epistolary format. At the heart of these novels, be they epistolary or psychological, you are likely to find an aspect (or effect of) love (supportive or destructive). The epistolary form provides a special degree of intimacy. And that’s why we love them.