Syme's Letter Writer
A Guide to Modern Correspondence About (Almost) Every Imaginable Subject of Daily Life, with Odes to Desktop Ephemera and Selected Letters of Famous Writers
A literary jaunt in praise of the lost art of letter writing that explores a cultural history and the undeniable thrill of old-school correspondence—from journalist and cultural critic Rachel Syme.
Inspired by a famed correspondence handbook penned by a persnickety Victorian who had strong opinions on how to lick a stamp, cultural critic Rachel Syme has rewritten the staid letter-writing rules of yore for the letter writers of today. Syme insists you must stuff your envelopes with flat frivolities (and includes guides for how to press flowers and make a matchbook-mark), teaches you how to perfume a parcel, and encourages you to cultivate your own ritual around keeping up with your correspondence. Even if you have never sent a …
Rachel Syme is a writer, reporter, and cultural critic. As a New Yorker staff writer, she covers style, Hollywood, and the arts. Her past work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, Elle, Vogue, and on NPR. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes her letters on a big walnut desk that looks out over a garden.
Syme's Letter Writer
Rachel Syme