Love letter
letter expressing feelings of love
A love letter is an expression of love in written form. However delivered, the letter may be anything from a short and simple message of love to a lengthy explanation and description of feelings.
History
One of the oldest references to a love letter dates to Indian mythology of more than 5,000 years ago. Mentioned in the Bhagavatha Purana, book 10, chapter 52, it is addressed by princess Rukmini to King Krishna and carried to him by her Brahmin messenger Sunanda.
Examples from Ancient Egypt range from the most formal, and possibly practical – "The royal widow [...] Ankhesenamun wrote a letter to the king of the Hittites, Egypt's old enemy, begging him to send one of his sons to Egypt to marry her" – to the down-to-earth: Let me "bathe in thy presence, that I may let thee see my beauty in my tunic of finest linen, when it is wet". A fine expression of literary skill can be found in Imperial China: when a heroine, faced with an arranged marriage, wrote to her childhood sweetheart, he exclaimed, "What choice talent speaks in her well-chosen words [...] everything breathes the style of a Li T'ai Po. How on earth can anyone want to marry her off to some humdrum clod?"
In Ancient Rome, "the tricky construction and reception of the love letter" formed the center of Ovid's Ars Amatoria or Art of Love: "The love letter is situated at the core of Ovidian erotics".
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and writer of Meditations, exchanged love letters with his tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto.
The Middle Ages saw the formal development of the Ars dictaminis, including the art of the love letter from opening to close. For salutations, "the scale in love letters is nicely graded from 'To the noble and discreet lady P., adorned with every elegance, greeting' to the lyrical fervors of 'Half of my soul and light of my eyes [...] greeting, and that delight which is beyond all word and deed to express'".
The public source identifies “Love letter” as letter expressing feelings of love. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Love, letter and expressing.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Love letter”, the useful work is to connect “letter expressing feelings of love” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1056617. The Library of Congress control number is sh85078536. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Love letter”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Love letter primary sources, Love letter archive and Love research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Love letter”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Love letter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.