What happened to all those love letter in a private drawer, sent and kept over centuries when this was the main medium for long distance love making? The population is larger than ever, yet the material that will survive the ephemera of digital letters and messages will likely be a fraction of what we now have in our archives, or yet to be found in attics and boxes.

‘I have seen many an excellent matron, who could never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks.’

Source: George Eliot, Adam Bede (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (1859)), p. 224

Photo credit: Joanna Koskinska at unsplash.com