Anne Stevenson, Correspondences: a Family History in Letters

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Stevenson’s

Correspondences: A Family History in Letters

was first published by OUP in 1974, simultaneously with

Travelling Behind Glass: Selected Poems 1963-1973

, the first collection of her poems to be published in the UK.

Correspondences

traces the development of six generations of an imagined American family through thirty-one epistolary poems, prose notes, fragments from journals, and excerpts from a mythical Vermont newspaper,

The Clearfield Enquirer

. The earliest entry in the sequence of records is dated 1829, while the most recent is dated 1972, so that the narrative as a whole covers a period of almost 150 years. The overall structure of Stevenson’s work establishes a new kind of literary artefact, mixing poetry and prose, moving backwards and forwards in time, requiring the…

3292 words

Citation: Gordon, Ian. "Correspondences: a Family History in Letters". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 February 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31601, accessed 19 March 2024.]

31601 Correspondences: a Family History in Letters 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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