Cirrus@Austlit

'Reading other people’s mail is one of the pleasures of being a biographer, the toil of deciphering illegible handwriting in archives rewarded by glimpses into the private worlds of the writers. The correspondence may be inspiring or prosaic; it may simply provide a scrap of biographical information. My bookshelves bulge with another form of archive, too: collections of letters by writers who have turned correspondence into an art, usually edited by academics and most often featuring writers who are no longer with us.' (Introduction)