One of the great letter-writers of her time, Carlyle spun her own human web through her extraordinary correspondence.
Thus began Mr. Carroll's "Legacy Project," which brought him 50,000 letters and led to a $500,000 contract with Scribner for "War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars".
During the last year, Andrew Carroll, editor of "War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars" (Washington Square Press, 2002), has gathered hundreds of letters and e-mail messages from members of the armed forces in and around Afghanistan.
Mr. Carroll, who edited the best-selling book "War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars," is the director of the Legacy Project, a national initiative that seeks to preserve wartime correspondence before such letters -- and now e-mail messages -- are lost or destroyed.
But the greater interest, naturally, lies in Webb Baker's personal story, and here it must be said that his letters, while absorbing and fresh, are not, in the vast library of Civil War correspondence, extraordinary.
As Britain's fortunes expanded, contracted, changed shape and took on new colours, then so, inevitably, did those of the Verneys.Adrian Tinniswood is able to chart the family's activities over such a long period thanks to the extraordinary archive of correspondence, both official and deeply personal, that it left behind.
"It was extraordinary working on the correspondence," Haughton says.
Maise Njor and Camilla Stockmann, young career-and-family women, published their correspondence on ordinary and extraordinary days in Michael Laudrups tænder.
And from the frank, intimate detail of their correspondence, it's clear that theirs was an extraordinary relationship, and very far from a "mariage blanc".
Public as Mr. Williams's extraordinary life was, filled with torment, and self-doubt, his correspondence to family, friends and colleagues during the years just prior to his fame reveal him as only his own words could.
The Vatican love letter joins other loans, among them portraits, tapestries and armour, that will be exhibited alongside the British Library's collection of correspondence, official documents, maps and books, to examine the extraordinary social transformations during the reign of Henry VIII.
