Riassunto
Riassunto di Le lettere di Jessica
A chi è rivolto
Readers who love letters and diaries, clever banter, and love stories where ideas matter as much as feelings. It suits anyone drawn to books about faith, books themselves, and Southern country life set against New York.
Che cos’è questo libro
The Jessica Letters is a novel told in letters, written by Paul Elmer More with Corra Harris, who supplied the voice of the young woman. It follows a New York newspaper editor named Philip Towers and a minister's daughter from Georgia named Jessica Doane. He is a scholar of old philosophies. She is a quick, teasing book reviewer who loves the woods near her home.
The story opens when Jessica visits Philip's office to ask whether she should give her life to literature. From that question grows a correspondence about books, God, poverty, duty and love. Every chapter is a letter, a note, a diary page or a message from a child, so you hear each person in their own words. What you get is a love story, and also an argument carried on across a thousand miles between two people who cannot stop writing to each other.
The book gives you wit, quarrels and tenderness in equal measure, along with a close look at how belief can shape a family. Let us begin where the two first meet, with an editor's cautious advice to a hopeful young writer.
In questo riassunto
- 1A warning turns into a friendshipFree
- 2Books, banter and a borrowed scholar
- 3Philip's confession and Jessica's heaven
- 4The quarrel over humanitarianism
- 5A visit, a refusal and the child Jack
- 6Engagement and the father's decision
- 7The father's prayer closet and a growing worry
- 8Diaries, stories and what Philip believes
- 9What the letters are really about
Punto chiave 1 di 9
A warning turns into a friendship
The book opens in New York, where Philip Towers, literary editor of a newspaper called The Gazette, writes to Miss Jessica Doane. She has just left his office after asking whether she should give her life to literature. He likes her review of a novel by Howells and offers her more books to review. Yet he answers her big question with gloom.
Philip says he has known only four people who truly gave themselves to literature, and each lives alone and unrecognised. He thinks the city has no real sense of letters, only a trade in books. He tells her to write for applause but not to take the art too seriously. He even asks pardon for the outburst, which he calls very uneditorial.
Jessica answers from Morningtown, Georgia, where her father is a travelling Methodist preacher. She describes her one day of freedom in the city and how she had pictured Philip as a grim old man with a white beard. She laughs at his warning and compares her writing to a mockingbird, which sings without thinking of sacrifice. She asks for his guidance anyway.
This first exchange sets the tone for the whole book. He is earnest and a little wounded by life. She is bright, teasing and quick to see through him. Each is curious about the other, and the books he sends become the first thread between them.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Le lettere di Jessica
What is The Jessica Letters about?
It is a love story told in letters between Philip Towers, a New York editor, and Jessica Doane, a Georgia preacher's daughter. They argue about books, faith and kindness to the poor while falling in love.
Who wrote The Jessica Letters?
Paul Elmer More, a critic and essayist, wrote Philip's letters, and the novelist Corra Harris wrote Jessica's. Together they created a two-sided exchange in which each voice is distinct.
Who is Jack in The Jessica Letters?
Jack is the small son of O'Meara, a ruined scholar who reviews books for Philip. After his father dies, Jack lives first with Philip and then with Jessica, and later writes his own short letters.
What does humanitarianism mean in the book?
Philip uses the word for the modern belief that serving human welfare is the highest duty. He thinks it ranks comfort above the spirit, while Jessica defends it as the better part of religion.