Sevigne: Selected Letters Book

Oh, these were utterly delightful, and I wish I had more of them. (Also, I would like to be able to read them in French someday.) They're a simply marvellous mix of court gossip, political news, and family matters, in a fluid and vivacious style, often very funny.

I laughed especially over the bit where her son discloses a recent problem with impotence: "He had found a favourable opportunity, and yet, dare I say it? His little gee-gee stopped short at Lerida. It was an extraordinary thing; the damsel had never found herself at such an entertainment in her life. The discomfited knight beat a retreat, thinking he was bewitched." (Although interestingly, she goes on to say, apparently without being upset, that her son told her that she had given him "some of the ice in [her] composition".)

Yet the letters aren't all humor; there's the sadness of death and of separation, and the melancholy of introspection, and the love of nature and literature.