Letters charting family inheritance, letters stowed away in attics, letters burnt at the end of romances, bittersweet letters written but never sent- women have long been associated with personal correspondence. Yet feminists reinvented the image of the female letter writer in the 1970s and 80s, undertaking new and passionate exchanges on sexuality, separatism, and strategy. Their letters reveal the changed interest women began to feel in one another and in the demands-and disappointments-these relationships would create. Margaretta Jolly provides the first cultural study of women's letters during this period, tracing the evolution of feminist political consciousness from the height of the women's movement to today's global networks. Jolly makes sense of the contradictory emotions of letter writing and captures a fragile yet persistent ideal of care, women's love, and epistolary art. From lesbian love letters to dispatches from women's encampments at Greenham Common and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, from letters exchanged between mothers and daughters to the spread of feminist internet communities, Jolly provides a fascinating glimpse into the intimate archives of contemporary women.
