AS OUR MIND IS STRENGTHENED by communication with vigorous and orderly minds, so it is impossible to say how much it loses and degenerates by our continual association and frequentation with mean and sickly minds.” So wrote the inventor of the essay, Michel de Montaigne, in the 1580s. “Mean and sickly minds” are the subject of Emily Cockayne’s wonderful book on the history of anonymous letters between the 1760s and the 1930s.
She has chosen the subject of those who flee from the “art of discussion” and the joys of repartee that Montaigne’s essay describes, and instead seek refuge in anonymous communications. Yet one of the great strengths of her book is not to dismiss the writers of these
