Ladies Of Letters New Old

When Irene Spencer meets Vera Small at her daughter Lesley's wedding reception they embark upon a correspondence that is quite unlike any other in the history of letter writing. Both Irene and Vera are happily widowed and endowed with errant offspring. They live in a world of church fetes and amateur dramatics, but love nothing more than dipping their pens in the vitriol pot while remaining the firmest of pen pals.

Using unpublished manuscript writings, this book reinterprets material, social, literary, philosophical and religious contexts of women's letter-writing in the long 18th century. It shows how letter-writing functions as a form of literary manuscript exchange and argues for manuscript circulation as a method of engaging with the republic of letters.

Created by writers Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield, Irene Spencer and Vera Small - aka "the ladies" - are happily widowed and live in a world of church f tes and amateur dramatics. But when Irene meets Vera, tipsy and tangoing, at Irene's daughter Lesley's wedding reception, they embark on a correspondence unlike any other in the history of letter - writing. In their letters they share all the twists and turns of life's rich tapestry in true acerbic and forthright form - swapping family stories and subtle put - downs with ease and aplomb. It is through the ladies' narrow vision that we learn to love their long - suffering families, and through their increasingly hilarious escapades that we learn to love them. Irresistible in its depiction of the foibles of female friendship, Ladies of Letters is a sparkling collection of letters full of humour and vitriol in equal measure.

In a world of the short and swift, of texts and Twitter, there's something of special value about a carefully composed letter. In homage to this most civilised of activities, Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire created the literary afternoons of Women of Letters. Some of Australia's finest dames of stage, screen and page have delivered missives on a series of themes, collected here for the first time. Claudia Karvan sends 'A love letter' to love itself, Helen Garner contacts ghosts of her past in 'The letter I wish I'd written', Noni Hazlehurst dispatches a stinging rebuke 'To my first boss', and Megan Washington pays tribute to her city and community as she writes 'To the best present I ever received'. And some gentlemen correspondents - including Paul Kelly, Eddie Perfect and Bob Ellis - have been invited to put pen to paper in a letter 'To the woman who changed my life'. By turns hilarious, moving and outrageous, this is a diverse and captivating tribute to the art of letter writing. All royalties for this book will go to Edgar's Mission animal rescue shelter.