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An epistolary novel is written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. The word "epistolary" comes from the word "epistle," meaning a letter.
One argument for using the epistolary form is that it can add greater realism and verisimilitude to the story, chiefly because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator.
Early Works
It is difficult to make out "the first" epistolary novel. The exchange between Abelard and Heloise, imbedded in the Roman de la Rose (1230) was an epistolary novel. Several Humanists wrote satirical fictional letters. The 17th century saw the genre exploring politics and scandal. The (sexually explicit) Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1667-1668) by Marianna Alcoforado became immensely famous and were translated into several European languages.
The first novel exploring the whole complex play the genre allowed were Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister which appeared in three successive volumes in 1684, 1685 and 1687. The novel risked the genre's power of changing perspectives: individual points were presented with the individual correspondents, the central author's voice and moral judgement disappeared (at least in the first volume, her further volumes introduced a narrator's voice). Behn furthermore explored a realm of intrigue with letters which got into the wrong hands, with faked letters, with letters withheld by protagonists of the more and more complex interaction.
The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in the works of such authors as Samuel Richardson, with his immensely successful novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749). In France, there was Lettres persanes (1721) by Montesquieu, followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), which used the epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774) (The Sorrows of Young Werther). The first North American novel, The History of Emily Montague (1769) by Frances Brooke was written in epistolary form.
Later in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savage burlesques. The most notable example of these was Henry Fielding's Shamela (1741), written as a parody of Pamela. In it, the female narrator can be found wielding a pen and scribbling her diary entries under the most dramatic and unlikeliest of circumstances.
The epistolary novel slowly fell out of use in the 19th century. By the time Jane Austen popularized the technique of the omniscient narrator, the epistolary form had become somewhat archaic. For example, Pride and Prejudice (1813) was originally written as an epistolary novel, but Austen rewrote it using a third-person omniscient narrator.
Later Works
Epistolary novels have since made rare but memorable appearances in more recent literature. Fyodor Dostoevsky used the epistolary format for his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), as a series of letters between two lovers, struggling to cope with their impoverished circumstances and their fleeting plans to marry.
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins uses a collection of various documents to construct a detective novel in English. In the second piece, a character explains that he is writing his portion because another had observed to him that the events surrounding the disappearance of a certain moonstone might reflect poorly on the family, if misunderstood, and therefore he was collecting the true story. This is an unusual element. Most epistolary novels present the documents without questions about how they were gathered. He also used the form previously in The Woman in White (1859).
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) uses not only letters and diaries, but dictation discs and newspaper accounts.
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.
Some of J.D. Salinger's stories about the Glass family are written in the form of letters.
Flowers for Algernon, written by Daniel Keyes in 1966 as an expanded version of his 1959 short story of the same name, is ostensibly the journal of mentally-retarded janitor Charlie Gordon, who temporarily becomes a super-genius during a medical experiment. Through changes in grammar and style, Charlie's mental rise and fall are presented in a remarkably effective and poignant way.
Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, and Letters by John Barth, are both extremely intricate epistolary novels.
Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki used the form of diary entries in Kagi (1956) (The Key), which was made into the film Odd Obsession (1960) starring Machiko Kyo and Tatsuya Nakadai.
Other notable examples from the mid-20th century are two novels by French author Hubert Monteilhet: Les Mantes Religieuses (1960) (The Praying Mantises), made into a BBC television film in 1982, Le Retour des Cendres (1962) (Return From the Ashes), made into a film starring Maximilian Schell in 1965, and Black Box (1986) by the Israeli author Amos Oz.
Emma Bull and Steven Brust's Freedom and Necessity (1997) combines letters with diary entries, as does Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982). Sue Townsend's popular Adrian Mole books for children take the form of diary entries.
The epistolary form has made a few appearances in contemporary literature, such as Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), Andrew Crumey's Mr Mee (2001), and Tim Parks' Home Thoughts (1999). Arguably, both Ella Minnow Pea (2001) and A Life (2004) by Mark Dunn are also written as epistolary novels.
Carrie by Stephen King (1976) is a fusion of traditional third person narration and epistolary style, combining the chronology of the events in the story with journal articles, interviews, AP ticker reports, and court transcripts (all fictional) that centre around the events of the story. The Green Mile (1996), also by Stephen King was written in a collection of six, one-hundred page books, and in its introduction King explains why he wanted it published in epistolary form, calling them "chapbooks."
Youth In Revolt by C.D. Payne is written in the form of the main character Nick Twisp's journal entries.
Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw takes the form of a series of letters written to an author from a young man.
Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies chronicles Ivy Rowe's life through letters to her pen pal, teacher, friends and family from the time she is seven until she is in her middle age.
Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede collaborated on Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country (1988), depicting an alternate Regency England; its sequel The Grand Tour: Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality (2004), turns from letters to diary extracts and testimony.
Kij Johnson wrote The Fox Woman as a series of diary extracts -- the diaries being those of an Heian-era nobleman and his wife, and the fox woman of the title. David Baratier an American of French/Indian descent wrote In It What's in It which has taken its own rotation as a recent epistolary novel heralded as the "most obscure but best American novel of the current age."
Stephen Chbosky's 'The Perks Of Being A Wallflower' is written as a series of letters, addressed to an anonymous recipient.
The most recent mutation of the epistolary novel is the novel in e-mails. Examples include Carl Steadman's Two Solitudes (1994), Rob Wittig's Blue Company (2001), Cecilia Ahern's Where Rainbows End/Rosie Dunne (US)/Love, Rosie (US reprint) (2006), and Rosie Rushton and Nina Schindler's P.S. He's Mine! (2001). In Spanish, the most important epistolary novel is the recent Voltaire's Heart (2005) by well- known Puerto Rican author Luis López Nieves.
Yann Martel's short story Manners of Dying is written as a set of different variants of an official letter that a warden writes to a mother of an executed prisoner named Kevin Barlow. In each letter both the exact details of Kevin's execution and the warden's reaction vary slightly.
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Epistolary novels | Narratology
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"Epistolary novel"