Selected Letters of William Styron

This volume, edited by Rose Styron and R. Blakeslee Gilpin, presents a generous selection of the author’s letters, covering nearly the entirety of his life and literary career. Styron was one of the great letter-writers of his generation; his letters are one of his signal achievements.

Included are letters to Styron’s father; to his literary contemporaries; to members of his family; to critics, editors, and biographers; and to readers who had written to praise or condemn his work. The book reads like an epistolary novel: the letters are frank, analytical, humorous, sometimes scurrilous, and above all revealing.

Selected Letters, published by Random House in 2012, includes introductory essays by both editors, together with a timeline of Styron’s life and extensive annotations.