Other People’s Mail

February 9, 1972–October 31, 1972

Attendees: 10,569

Lola Szladits was an avid letter writer, so it should not come as a surprise that she was fond of famous authors’ correspondence as well. In Other People’s Mail, she presented sixteen particularly notable or moving letters by English and American authors from the 18th to the 20th century. The accompanying exhibition catalog—which reproduced the letters in their entirety—featured original artwork by Edward Gorey. The book was featured prominently in the windows of the legendary New York City bookshop, haven of the avant-garde, and publisher of much of Gorey’s work: the Gotham Book Mart.

From the catalog:

“Those of us who delight in reading other people’s mail will never give up the pleasure of disguising ourselves, however briefly, in the role of the recipients of letters sent by great letter writers. Who would not want to overhear Horace Walpole’s complaint about gout, or T. S. Eliot’s tetrahedral complications (in verse) two centuries later? Who would not share the tragedy of Keats’s final farewell to his beloved Fanny Brawne or Emily Dickinson’s consolatory musings on the death of Judge Lor, or stand by the deathbed of Emily Brontë as described by her sister Charlotte? . . . . There will always be, no doubt, a small number of resisting practitioners of a dying art who will grab the nearest felt-tip pen or electric typewriter and dash off the next letter, and next, and next note, and never desert the cherished and well-worn love letter for a babbled verbal confession.’”