* The epistolary novel Ides of March by Thornton Wilder centers on Julius Caesar, but prominently features Catullus, his poetry, his relationship ( and correspondence ) with Clodia, correspondence from his family and a description of his death.

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents.

There are two theories on the genesis of the epistolary novel.

The other theory claims that the epistolary novel arose from miscellanies of letters and poetry: some of the letters were tied together into a ( mostly amorous ) plot.

The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish " Prison of Love " ( Cárcel de amor ) ( c. 1485 ) by Diego de San Pedro, belongs to a tradition of novels in which a large number of inserted letters already dominated the narrative.

Within the successive editions of Edmé Boursault's Letters of Respect, Gratitude and Love ( Lettres de respect, d ' obligation et d ' amour ) ( 1669 ), a group of letters written to a girl named Babet was expanded and became more and more distinct from the other letters, until it formed a small epistolary novel entitled Letters to Babet ( Lettres à Babet ).

The founder of the epistolary novel in English is said by many to be James Howell ( 1594 – 1666 ) with " Familiar Letters ", who writes of prison, foreign adventure, and the love of women.

The first North American novel, The History of Emily Montague ( 1769 ) by Frances Brooke was written in epistolary form.

The epistolary novel slowly fell out of use in the late 18th century.

It is thought that her lost novel First Impressions, which was redrafted to become Pride and Prejudice, may have been epistolary: Pride and Prejudice contains an unusual number of letters quoted in full and some play a critical role in the plot.

Mary Shelley employs the epistolary form in her novel Frankenstein ( 1818 ).

* Fyodor Dostoevsky used the epistolary format for his first novel, Poor Folk ( 1846 ), as a series of letters between two friends, struggling to cope with their impoverished circumstances and life in pre-revolution Russia.

While the novel draws on the epistolary form, by the end of the story it reduces it, along with other media, to a monstrous " mass of typewriting ".

* C. S. Lewis used the epistolary form for The Screwtape Letters ( 1942 ), and considered writing a companion novel from an angel's point of view — though he never did so.

* Stephen King's novel Carrie ( 1974 ) is written in an epistolary structure, through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, and excerpts from books.

* John Updike's S. ( 1988 ) is an epistolary novel consisting of the Heroin's letters and transcribed audio recordings.

* We Need to Talk about Kevin ( 2003 ) is a monologic epistolary novel, written as a series of letters to the narrator's husband Franklin.

* Burley Cross Postbox Theft ( 2010 ) by Nicola Barker is a polylogic epistolary novel consisting of a bundle of 26 undelivered letters stolen from a mailbox in the titular village of Burley Cross.

* The Antagonist ( 2011 ) by Lynn Coady is a monologic epistolary novel conveyed through increasingly unanswered email messages.

He also pursued an unconsummated romantic attachment with the 25-year-old Sophie d ' Houdetot, which partly inspired his epistolary novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse ( also based on memories of his idyllic youthful relationship with Mme de Warens ).

* epistolary novel

Microserfs, published by HarperCollins in 1995, is an epistolary novel by Douglas Coupland.

His thoughts are funneled into the book through the epistolary format of the novel, and also as he records stream of consciousness lists of terms that he believes exist in a computer's subconscious.

The novel deals with its theme of self-reflection also on the level of narratology in that its main topic of mindreading is presented by an omniscient narrator ; a minor ironic twist consists of the novel-within-a-novel motif with the fictitious novelist Helen Reed pondering about the old-fashioned genre of the epistolary novel while her thoughts are presented the very form of letters / emails.

Egyptologist Edward Wente ( 1990 ) speculates that the Fifth-dynasty Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi — in his many letters sent to his viziers — was a pioneer in the epistolary genre.

In addition to the usual problems of defining the novel as a genre, Aphra Behn had written at least one epistolary novel prior to Oroonoko.

" Initially, for most of its first readers as well as for its author, it was not considered primarily a novel, and even less an " epistolary novel " ( as it is often classified now ), which was not at that time a constituted genre.

Pal Joey is a 1940 epistolary novel by John O ' Hara, which became the basis of the 1940 stage musical comedy and 1957 motion picture of the same name, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart.

In the early months of 1741, Psalmanazar appears to have sent the novelist Samuel Richardson an unsolicited bundle of forty handwritten pages which attempted to continue the plotline of Richardson ’ s immensely popular epistolary novel Pamela.

The novel was sufficiently popular that Sarah wrote Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple as an epistolary furtherance to the novel in 1747.

Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savage burlesques.

Other major 18th century English novelists are Samuel Richardson ( 1689-1761 ), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded ( 1740 ) and Clarissa ( 1747-8 ); Henry Fielding ( 1707 – 54 ), who wrote Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ( 1749 ); Laurence Sterne ( 1713 – 68 ) who published Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767 ; Oliver Goldsmith (? 1730-74 ) author of The Vicar of Wakefield ( 1766 ); Tobias Smollett ( 1721 – 71 ) a Scottish novelist best known for his comic picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle ( 1751 ) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker ( 1771 ), who influenced Charles Dickens ; and Fanny Burney ( 1752-1840 ), whose novels " were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen ," wrote Evelina ( 1778 ), Cecilia ( 1782 ) and Camilla ( 1796 ).

The letters, in book form, set a precedent for sentimentalism in European culture at large, and for the literary genres of the sentimental novel and the epistolary novel, into the 18th century, such as the " Lettres persanes " by Montesquieu ( 1721 ), " Lettres péruviennes " by Françoise de Graffigny ( 1747 ) and " Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse )" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ( 1761 ).

He is a belated Danish pupil of the 18th century English epistolary style while, in his interest for dialect and peasants, he anticipates the regional writers who emerged around 1900, such as Johannes Vilhelm Jensen.

Other epistolary novels followed by Claude Barbin, Vincent Voiture, Edmé Boursault, Fontenelle ( who used the form to introduce discussion of philosophical and moral matters, prefiguring Montesquieu's Lettres persanes in the 18th century ) and others ; actual love letters written by noble ladies ( Madame de Bussy-Lameth, Madame de Coligny ) were also published.

In the late 19th century, Bram Stoker released one of the most widely recognized and successful novels in the epistolary form to date, Dracula.

Among further names proposed, are Hermagoras ( a rhetorician who lived in Rome during the 1st century AD ), Aelius Theon ( author of a work which had many ideas in common with those of On the Sublime ), and Pompeius Geminus ( who was in epistolary conversation with Dionysius ).

With Steven Brust, Bull wrote Freedom and Necessity ( 1997 ), an epistolary novel set during the 19th century United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Chartist movement.

The century had a richer output in prose than in verse, and history, biography, sermons, and epistolary correspondence all flourished.

Doctor Glas, an epistolary novel by Hjalmar Söderberg, tells the story of a physician in 19th century Sweden who deals with moral and love issues.

These letters include everything from personal letters to official government correspondence ( mostly in English ), letters to fellow humanist scholars ( in Latin ), including several epistolary tracts, verse epistles, prefatory letters ( some fictional ) to several of More's own works, letters to his children and their tutors ( in Latin ), and the so-called " prison-letters " ( in English ) which he exchanged with his oldest daughter, Margaret Roper while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London awaiting execution.

Relatively few works of fiction have Tintagel as a setting: these include Anthony Trollope's short story Malachi's Cove and the Williamsons ' epistolary novel Set in Silver, 1909 ( by Charles and Alice Williamson ).

Clara Howard and Jane Talbot have been regarded sometimes as relatively conventional works distinct from the earlier novels because they have classic epistolary form and concern domestic issues that seem very different from the violence and sensationalism of the first four novels.

Although epistolary works can be considered multiple-person narratives, they also can be classified separately, as they arguably have no narrator at all — just an author who has gathered the documents together in one place.

Thus, Sanditon is a text that demonstrates Austen's interest in the practical results of communication — an issue with which she had experimented since she used the epistolary novel form in such early works as Lady Susan.

These works are unusual in modern fiction in being epistolary novels, written using the style of the letter game.

The Cartas marruecas have often been compared to Montesquieu's, ( 1689 – 1755 ), own Lettres Persanes, ( Persian Letters, 1721 ), although in reality both works represented the period's fascination with epistolary narrative.