So, as you are probably a fellow book nerd comme moi, I bet you enjoy lists as much as I do. So, in an idle moment one day, I was thinking how I love epistolary* novels and thought I would compile a list to see how many epistolary novels (and similar non-fiction) I had either read or had on the TBR pile right now.

This is what I have come up with so far (in no particular order):

• Letters of a Woman Homesteader – Eleanor Pruitt Stewart
• Letters from Father Christmas – Tolkein
• The Country Diaries: A Year in the British Countryside – Alan Taylor (ed.)
• The Diary of Ann Frank – Ann Frank
• The Diaries of Adrian Mole – Sue Townsend
• The Assassin’s Cloak – Alan and Irene Taylor (ed.)
• Gone with the Windsors – Laurie Graham
• The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt – Caroline Preston
• Diary without Dates – Edith Bagnold
• Diary of a Good Neighbor – Doris Lessing
• If the Old Could Talk – Doris Lessing
• Clarissa (or The History of a Young Lady) – Samuel Richardson
• Dracula – Bram Stoker
• Narrative of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass
• The Worst Journey in the World (Antarctic) – Apsley Cherry-Garrard
• Radioactive (Marie Curie) – Laurie Redniss
• The Provincial Lady diaries – E. M. Delafield
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Paul Torday
• Woman’s World – Graham Rawle
• Harriet the Spy – Louise Fitzhugh
• Alan Bennett has lots of epistolary stuff
• Book of One’s Own: People and their Diaries – Thomas Mallon
• The Hidden Writer – Alexandra Johnson
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hill – Anne Bronte
• The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
• Daddy Long-Legs – Jean Webster
• Griffin and Sabine trilogy – Nick Bantock
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society – Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• We Need to Talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver
• Sherlock Holmes has some epistolary stuff in
• As We Are Now – May Sarton
• Something Happened Yesterday – Beryl Bainbridge
• The Diary of a Nobody – Weedon and George Grossmith
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• So Long a Letter – Mariama Bâ
• Love, Nina – Nina Stibbes (NF)
• Like One of the Family – Alice Childress (F)
• Letters from New York – Helen Hanff (NF)
• The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins (F)
• Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther – Elizabeth van Arnim (F)
• A Celibate Season – Carol Shields (F) – let me save you some time. Don’t.
• The Ginger Tree – Oswald Wynd (F)
• As for Me and My House – Sinclair Ross (F)
• The Diaries of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing (F)
• As for Me and My House – Sinclair Ross (F)
• The Diary of Hendrick Groen Aged 83 3/4 – anon. (No blog post but trust me – it was good.)
• Kindred – Octavia E. Butler (1976)
• The Lizard Cage – Karen Connelly (2005)
• Mrs. Miniver – Jan Struther (1939)

Others that you think of from your reading experience? Just try to remember without googling. More fun that way!

*Epistolary (defined according to Miriam-Webster): of, relating to, suitable to a letter; contained or carried on by letters. Other acceptable formats: diary entries, newspaper clippings, emails etc.

Updated: 10/01/2019.