I've been working on this book for the last few weeks:
Inside this book are 24 letters written over a period from September 1881 to December 1883 to a Miss Nancy A Austin in Yorkville from a gentleman named W M Moody. In these letters W writes of his love for Nancy and of how he wishes he could see her more often. In one letter he writes "Let my pleasures be great or few but the happiest hours I ever spent I spent them along with you." and in another "I think of you when you are far away oh that I could see you I could tell you more in one hour than I could write in a day and it would be pleasing to my very heart." He obviously loved her very much but I got the impression from the letters that they weren't allowed to see each other very often because he was away for some reason but the reason is never mentioned.
It was a bit of a challenge to come up with a way to display these letters because I was working with paper that was over 100 years old. The envelopes were crumbling and many of them were missing the backs or had torn loose from them. I really wanted to use them though because they had so much character and charm.
So I created a pocket on each page in the book that I attached the outside of the envelope to and then tucked the letter inside of that. The pages themselves are a nice 100% cotton Stonehenge paper that I "aged" with walnut ink. All the pages were torn to size by hand.
I wanted the reader of the book to be able to experience what was written in the letters without having to actually handle the letters so I went through and transcribed all of them and then printed excerpts from each of them. The letters are not in too bad a shape considering how old they are but they do need to be handled with great care. You can read all the excerpts that I printed in the book here if you like.
In his last letter to her in December of 1883 he writes "I am going to send you one of my cards and I hope you will appreciate it and remember it as the poetry ascends from ones heart. "
I happened to have acquired a stack of old cabinet cards from the 1800's so I went through and picked one and tucked it into the last pocket along with the letter. In this last letter to her he is telling her goodbye and wishes her well. He writes "May the rose head of your happy life ever bloom with true happiness is the wish of your true friend". I decided to include a complete transcription of the letter as the last one in the book since it's the last one in the series. Again you can read all of the excerpts from the book here.
