Famous Love Letters in History: 15 Letters and the Stories Behind Them

The most famous love letters in history were never meant for us. They were written by a king to the woman he wanted to marry, by a future US president to the girl he was courting, by a poet who was dying young and by a composer who may never have sent his letter at all. This guide collects 15 famous love letters, from Henry VIII in the Tudor court to Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett in Victorian London, with a short public-domain excerpt from each, the story behind it, and the archive or edition that preserves it.

Every quote below comes from a letter that is well out of copyright, and every one is linked to the library, archive or published edition where you can read the full text yourself. Along the way, we'll look at what these letters have in common, a few myths that cling to them, and how you can borrow their best habits for your own notes.

Famous love letters at a glance

Here's the full list in one table, in the order we'll cover them. Dates are as given in the archive or edition we cite. Where the original date is uncertain, the editor's brackets or "c." (short for circa, meaning "about") are kept.

#	Writer	To	Date	Where to read it
1	Henry VIII	Anne Boleyn	Undated (Letter Fourth)	17-letter series referred to as part of the Vatican collection
2	Henry VIII	Anne Boleyn	Undated (Letter Thirteenth)	Same series
3	Dorothy Osborne	William Temple	c. 1653	Selected English Letters
4	Richard Steele	Mary Scurlock	1707	Selected English Letters
5	Richard Steele	His wife, "Prue"	12 August 1708	Selected English Letters
6	John Adams	Abigail Smith	4 October 1762	Massachusetts Historical Society
7	Abigail Adams	John Adams	23 December 1782	Massachusetts Historical Society
8	Napoleon Bonaparte	Josephine	3 April 1796	Napoleon's Letters to Josephine
9	William Hazlitt	Sarah Stoddart	[January 1808]	Selected English Letters
10	Ludwig van Beethoven	The "Immortal Beloved"	6 and 7 July (year disputed)	Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
11	John Keats	Fanny Brawne	3 July 1819	Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
12	John Keats	Fanny Brawne	13 October 1819	Same edition
13	Emma Wedgwood	Charles Darwin	[21 to 22 November 1838]	Cambridge University Library
14	Robert Browning	Elizabeth Barrett	10 January 1845	The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
15	Elizabeth Barrett	Robert Browning	11 January 1845	Same edition

We've kept Abigail's 1782 letter next to John's courtship note so the Adams story reads in one piece, which puts the list slightly out of strict date order.

Before you read: old spelling, dates and archives

A few quick notes will make these letters easier to enjoy.

Spelling was looser

Before dictionaries settled English spelling, writers spelled by ear. Keats writes "liv'd" and "ravish'd." Hazlitt and Steele use capitals in places we wouldn't. We've kept the spelling exactly as printed in the editions we cite, because that's part of the charm.

Square brackets mean an editor stepped in

Many letters weren't dated by their writers. When you see a date like "[January 1808]," the brackets mean a later editor worked it out from postmarks, references or other letters. It's an educated estimate, not the writer's own words.

Archives versus editions

An archive is the library or institution that holds the original paper letter. An edition is a printed (and now often digitized) book that transcribes it. For some of these letters we can point you to the archive that holds the original. For others, the originals are scattered or privately owned, so we point you to the public-domain edition where the text was first published or is easiest to read. We've said which is which for every letter.

Tudor and Stuart letters: a king and a careful lover

1. Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn: "my heart and I surrender"

Henry VIII's letters to Anne Boleyn are the oldest on our list, and some of the most surprising. The famously domineering king sounds, in places, like a nervous suitor. According to the introduction to The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, on Project Gutenberg, the series runs to seventeen letters, eight in English and nine in French. The introduction refers to them as part of the Vatican collection, and the text in that edition comes from a version printed in Paris.

In Letter Fourth, Henry tells Anne that "my heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands." For a king, that's quite a thing to put in writing. It's also a reminder that formal, even flowery, language was how people of high rank expressed strong feeling in that era.

2. Henry VIII's coded signature

The most fun detail in Henry's letters isn't a sentence at all. It's the way he signs some of them. In Letter Thirteenth, as printed in the same edition, the signature reads "H. no other A B seek R." The editor's notes explain it as Henry saying he seeks no other, with Anne's initials set inside a heart, and "R" for Rex, Latin for "king." Letters Fifth and Ninth use similar variations.

It's essentially a 16th-century monogram doodle: a grown man, and a king, putting his beloved's initials inside a heart. People have been doing a version of this in notebooks ever since.

A note of balance: these letters are romantic, but the story they belong to ended badly for Anne. We include them because of their historical importance, not because the relationship is a model.

3. Dorothy Osborne to William Temple: "the share you have in my heart"

Dorothy Osborne (1628 to 1698) is one of the great letter writers in English, and she wasn't trying to be. Her letters to William Temple, the man she eventually married, are witty, practical and quietly devoted. Six of them appear in Selected English Letters (XV to XIX Centuries), on Project Gutenberg, dated by the editor to about 1653.

In one, titled by the editor "The growth of friendship," she writes, "I can never repent of the share you have in my heart." It's a beautifully restrained line. She isn't swooning. She's telling him, plainly, that her love is settled and she has no regrets. In another, she simply wishes him with her as she passes the time.

Osborne's letters are a great model for anyone who feels awkward writing big romantic statements. Her secret is honesty: she writes about her days, her family, and her doubts, and the love shows through the details.

Eighteenth-century letters: Steele, Prue and the Adamses

4. Richard Steele to Mary Scurlock: "tenderly, passionately, faithfully thine"

Richard Steele (1672 to 1729) was a writer and editor, and his courtship letters to Mary Scurlock in 1707 are among the most charming in English. The same Selected English Letters collection includes three of them. In the first, dated 11 August 1707, he asks permission to call on her and talks about wanting to lead his life with her.

Another, written from Smith Street in Westminster, ends: "Dear Molly, I am tenderly, passionately, faithfully thine." "Molly" was a common pet form of Mary. Three adverbs, one after another, each a little stronger. It's a small lesson in rhythm.

5. Richard Steele to "Prue": "better than the light of my eyes"

Mary Scurlock married Steele, and he went on writing to her, now as "Prue," his pet name for her. In a letter dated 12 August 1708 he tells her, "I love you better than the light of my eyes or the life-blood in my heart."

What makes Steele's married letters lovable is how ordinary many of them are. The editor includes notes about outings and errands, including a very short one that reads simply, "For thee I die, for thee I languish." Steele is proof that love letters don't stop after the wedding. If anything, the everyday ones say more.

"Prue" is a good example of something we talk about a lot on this site: pet names that come from a real name or a private joke. Our list of vintage terms of endearment has more names from this era.

6. John Adams to Abigail Smith: "Miss Adorable"

Before he was a revolutionary, a diplomat or the second President of the United States, John Adams was a young lawyer courting Abigail Smith. His letter of 4 October 1762, preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society's Adams Family Papers electronic archive, opens with the salutation "Miss Adorable."

The letter is a joke written in legal language. Adams, playing lawyer, "orders" Abigail to give the bearer of the letter as many kisses and as many hours of her company after nine o'clock as he wants, and to charge them to Adams's account. He adds that he has already given "two or three Millions at least" of kisses, so the balance is in her favor.

It's silly, flirtatious and very human. It also shows something every couple knows: inside jokes, especially ones based on what you do for a living, make some of the best love notes.

7. Abigail Adams to John Adams: "Ever remember me as I do you"

Twenty years later, the tone is very different. John Adams spent years abroad on diplomatic missions, and Abigail ran the farm and family at home. In her letter of 23 December 1782, also in the Massachusetts Historical Society's archive, she opens with "My dearest Friend," the salutation she often used, and writes about what she calls the "dreary years of absence."

She says that if she drew him a picture of her heart, it would show nothing new, because his affection has filled it for so long. And she closes by asking him to "Ever remember me as I do you." She signs it "Portia," the classical pen name she used in her letters.

Read together, the Adams letters show love changing shape over two decades: from playful courtship to deep, patient partnership. "My dearest Friend" might be the most moving salutation in American history.

Revolution and Romanticism: Napoleon and Hazlitt

8. Napoleon to Josephine: "To live for Josephine"

Napoleon Bonaparte's letters to Josephine are famous for their intensity. In the spring of 1796 he was on campaign, and he wrote to her again and again. Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796 to 1812, on Project Gutenberg, edited and translated by Henry Foljambe Hall, collects them in English.

In a letter headed "Port Maurice, April 3rd," he calls her "My unique Josephine" and says that away from her there is no more joy. He adds: "To live for Josephine, that is the history of my life." Another early letter opens "Sweet and incomparable Josephine."

Hall's introduction notes that the most complete versions of the early 1796 letters were printed in 1824, in an appendix to Charles Tennant's travel book A Tour through Parts of the Netherlands, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Savoy, and France, which included facsimile copies of eight of the letters. In other words, the originals have long been scattered, and much of what we read comes through early printed copies and translations.

9. William Hazlitt to Sarah Stoddart: "Goodbye, little dear"

William Hazlitt (1778 to 1830) was a sharp, sometimes combative essayist. His letter to Sarah Stoddart, dated by the editor to January 1808 and included in Selected English Letters under the plain heading "A love-letter," shows a softer side. It opens "MY DEAR LOVE," and it ends, sweetly, "Goodbye, little dear!"

Hazlitt's letter is a good reminder that you don't need grand phrases. A warm greeting and a fond goodbye, with ordinary news in between, is often enough.

The Romantic age: Beethoven and Keats

10. Beethoven to his "Immortal Beloved"

This is perhaps the most mysterious love letter ever written. After Beethoven's death, a letter in pencil was found among his papers, addressed to a woman he never names. He calls her, among other things, his "immortal beloved." The original is held today by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (the Berlin State Library), which describes its Beethoven holdings as coming from the largest collection of the composer's autographs. On its blog post about its Beethoven exhibition, the library calls the letter perhaps the most puzzling document of Beethoven's life and says that who it was written to has still not been established.

The letter is written across two days, the 6th and 7th of July. In the 19th-century English translation in Beethoven's Letters 1790 to 1826, Volume 1, on Project Gutenberg, it opens "MY ANGEL! MY ALL! MY SECOND SELF!" and closes "Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever each other's."

That old edition also shows how much scholarship has changed. Its heading names Countess Giulietta Guicciardi as the recipient and dates the letter to 1800. Later researchers questioned both the date and the identification, and the library that holds the letter now says plainly that the recipient is unknown. So if you see a confident claim online about exactly who she was, treat it with caution.

11. John Keats to Fanny Brawne: "three summer days"

John Keats (1795 to 1821) fell in love with Fanny Brawne in the last years of his short life. His letters to her are some of the most quoted in the language. Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, on Project Gutenberg, is the edition by Harry Buxton Forman, whose remarks were first published in 1878. Forman explains that the letters were held by Fanny Brawne's family, who entrusted them to him.

Letter I, written from Shanklin on the Isle of Wight and postmarked 3 July 1819, contains the line: "I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days." He goes on to say that three such days with her would hold more delight than fifty ordinary years.

It's a beautiful image, and it fits Keats perfectly. Butterflies are brief and bright, and the line is about choosing a short, intense happiness over a long, ordinary one. Knowing that Keats himself died in 1821, still in his mid-twenties, makes it hard to read without a lump in the throat.

12. John Keats to Fanny Brawne: "I cannot exist without you"

By the autumn, Keats was back in London and more openly anguished. Letter VIII, written from 25 College Street and postmarked 13 October 1819, contains two of his most famous lines: "You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist," and, more simply, "I cannot exist without you."

"Ravish'd" here means "carried away" or "overwhelmed with feeling," an older sense of the word. Keats isn't being dramatic for effect. These letters read like someone thinking out loud, and that rawness is exactly why readers still love them.

Victorian love letters: Darwin and the Brownings

13. Emma Wedgwood to Charles Darwin: "we now do belong to each other"

Charles Darwin is better known for barnacles and evolution than for romance, but his engagement to his cousin Emma Wedgwood produced some touching letters. The Darwin Correspondence Project at the University of Cambridge publishes Emma's letter of 21 to 22 November 1838, written from her family home at Maer. The original is in the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library.

She tells him she felt flat after he left, and calls him "my own dear Charley." She writes that "we now do belong to each other." Then, with real honesty, she raises her worry that their views on religion might differ, and thanks him for being open about his doubts.

That combination is what makes the letter great. It's affectionate and also brave. Emma doesn't hide a serious difference. She names it kindly, early, and in writing, which is a remarkable thing for a newly engaged person to do.

14. Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett: "I love your verses with all my heart"

The Browning courtship is the great love-letter story of the Victorian age. It began with a fan letter. On 10 January 1845, the poet Robert Browning wrote to the already famous poet Elizabeth Barrett at 50 Wimpole Street. His first line, as printed in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Volume 1, on Project Gutenberg, is: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett."

Later in that very first letter he writes "and I love you too." They hadn't met yet. It's a bold opening, softened by the fact that he's clearly writing as an admiring fellow poet.

The preface to this edition, signed "R.B.B." and dated 1898, explains that Browning kept the letters in an inlaid box, numbered in his own hand, and that they were never separated after the marriage. It says these letters are all that ever passed between the two, and that the editor felt the only choices were to publish them or destroy them.

15. Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning: "from the bottom of my heart"

Elizabeth Barrett answered the next day, 11 January 1845. Her reply opens: "I thank you, dear Mr. Browning, from the bottom of my heart." A little later she writes, "Sympathy is dear, very dear to me." (The edition uses a double hyphen where we'd use a comma or dash.)

Notice how carefully matched the two letters are. He loves her verses "with all my heart"; she thanks him "from the bottom of my heart." The courtship that followed played out in hundreds of letters across 1845 and 1846, the span covered by the two-volume edition, until the two poets married.

What these famous love letters have in common

Fifteen letters, five centuries, and very different people. Yet the same few techniques show up again and again. Here they are, with an example from our list and a way to borrow the idea.

Technique	Example from the letters	How to borrow it
A special salutation	Adams's "Miss Adorable"; Abigail's "My dearest Friend"	Open with a name only you use for them.
A private joke	Adams's mock legal "order" for kisses	Play with something from your work or hobbies.
A single vivid image	Keats's three summer days as butterflies	Pick one picture rather than many adjectives.
Rhythm and build	Steele's "tenderly, passionately, faithfully"	Use three words that grow stronger.
Plain honesty	Osborne's quiet "I can never repent"; Emma Wedgwood naming a worry	Say the true thing simply.
A signature flourish	Henry VIII's initials in a heart	Sign off with a symbol or pet name that's yours.
Echoing their words	Barrett answering Browning's "with all my heart"	Pick up a phrase from their last message.
Everyday detail	Steele's notes about outings and errands	Love letters can be about Tuesday.

Pet names were everywhere

Almost every letter here uses a term of endearment: Molly, Prue, Charley, Portia, "little dear," "my angel." Pet names were as much a part of love letters then as they are of text messages now. If you'd like inspiration from the same tradition, our guides to words of endearment for her and words of endearment for him are good places to start, and our overview of terms of endearment explains where many of them came from.

Distance made the letters

Look at why these letters exist at all. Adams was overseas. Napoleon was at war. Keats was on the Isle of Wight. Darwin had just left Maer. Love letters are a product of separation. That's also why so many of them have survived: when couples were together, they didn't need to write.

How love-letter language changed over five centuries

Line the letters up in date order and you can watch the language of love shift, even across this small sample. The feelings stay the same. The way people put them on paper doesn't.

Openings

Henry VIII's letters, as translated in the edition we cite, are formal and courtly. By the 1700s, openings get more personal: "Dear Molly" for Steele, "Miss Adorable" for Adams. By Hazlitt's "MY DEAR LOVE" in 1808 and Beethoven's "MY ANGEL! MY ALL!", writers are opening with the feeling itself. And the Browning letters show the polite Victorian middle ground: "dear Miss Barrett," "dear Mr. Browning," with the warmth tucked inside the sentence.

Sign-offs

Sign-offs follow a similar path. Henry signs with a cipher and his royal initial. Steele signs "faithfully thine," using the old "thee" and "thine" forms that were already sounding poetic. Abigail Adams signs with a pen name, "Portia." Hazlitt simply says goodbye to his "little dear." The modern habit of ending a message with "love you" or a row of kisses is part of the same long tradition of finding a closing that feels personal.

Thee, thine and you

Older English used "thou," "thee" and "thine" for people you were close to, and "you" for more formal or plural address. By the time of these letters, "thee" and "thine" were fading from everyday speech but survived in poetry, prayer and love letters, which is why Steele reaches for them. Using them gave a letter an extra layer of tenderness, a little like switching to a pet name today.

What stayed the same

Across every century on this list, writers did three things: they used a special name, they told the other person what they missed about them, and they tried to describe a feeling that ordinary words didn't quite cover. That's still what a good love note does.

Myths and mix-ups about famous love letters

"We know who Beethoven's Immortal Beloved was."

We don't. Many candidates have been proposed, and a 19th-century edition confidently named one. But the library that holds the letter says the recipient still hasn't been identified. Be wary of any article that states her name as fact.

"Love letter quotes online are always accurate."

Unfortunately not. Many lines attributed to famous people on social media are paraphrased, translated loosely or invented. If a line matters to you, check it against an archive or a published edition, like the ones linked in this article. That's exactly why we quote only what we could confirm in a source.

"Henry VIII wrote all his letters in English."

According to the edition we cite, nine of the seventeen were in French, the language of courtly romance at the time, and eight in English. Any English version of the French letters is a translation.

"Napoleon's letters are all in his original words."

Napoleon wrote in French, and English readers meet his letters through translators like Henry Foljambe Hall. Translation choices shape how passionate, or how stiff, a letter sounds. Two translations of the same line can feel quite different.

"Old love letters were always flowery."

Some were. But Osborne, Hazlitt and Abigail Adams wrote with remarkable plainness. "Ever remember me as I do you" is eight short words. The idea that older generations only wrote in elaborate language comes partly from which letters get quoted most.

How archives keep love letters alive

It's worth pausing on the fact that we can read these letters at all. Paper is fragile, and private letters were often burned, lost or thrown away. The ones that survive usually do so for one of a few reasons.

• A family kept them. Keats's letters stayed with Fanny Brawne's family until they were published, according to Forman's edition.
• The writer kept them. Robert Browning kept his and Elizabeth's letters together in a box, numbered by hand.
• A great library collected them. Beethoven's letter is in Berlin; Emma Wedgwood's is in Cambridge University Library's Darwin Archive.
• A historical society preserved them. The Massachusetts Historical Society holds the Adams Family Papers and has put many of John and Abigail's letters online.

Today, digital projects mean you don't have to travel to Boston, Berlin or Cambridge to read them. You can read the Adams letters, the Darwin correspondence and the public-domain editions of Keats, Browning and Napoleon for free, from your phone. That's a small modern miracle worth enjoying.

How to read an archive letter page

1. Find the date line. Check whether it's the writer's own date or an editor's bracketed estimate.
2. Look for the source note. Archive pages usually give a reference code for the original, like "DAR 204" on the Darwin letter.
3. Read the transcription slowly. Old abbreviations and spellings make more sense out loud.
4. Check the notes. Editors explain names, places and in-jokes you'd otherwise miss.

Try it yourself: a letter in the classic style

You don't need to be a poet to write something your partner will keep for years. Here's a simple method drawn from the letters above.

1. Start with a name only you use. Like "Miss Adorable" or "Dear Prue," your opening sets the tone. If you need ideas, our list of nicknames for your lover is full of options.
2. Tell them one ordinary thing. What did you do today? What made you think of them? Steele and Osborne filled their letters with daily life.
3. Add one image. Keats chose butterflies. You might choose the first place you met, or a song, or the view from your window.
4. Say the plain true thing. "I'm glad it's you." "I miss you." Abigail Adams needed only eight words.
5. Close with a flourish. A pet name, an initial inside a heart, or a sign-off that's become your private habit.

An illustrative example

Here's a short, made-up example using those five steps, purely to illustrate the method:

Dear Captain Coffee, I watched the rain from the bus today and thought about the afternoon we got soaked walking home from the bookstore. I'd happily get soaked like that every week for the rest of my life. I'm so glad it's you. Ever yours, M.

That's five sentences, and it borrows something from five different letter writers on our list. It doesn't need to be longer to mean a lot.

For more ways to make someone feel appreciated without a big production, see our ideas for ways to make your partner feel special. And if you're writing for February 14, our Valentine's Day ideas pair well with a handwritten note. We're also covering the history of Valentine's Day itself in a separate article.

The lasting power of famous love letters

Famous love letters last because they let us overhear something private and recognize ourselves in it. A king doodles initials in a heart. A future president makes a lawyer's joke about kisses. A dying poet wishes for three summer days. A newly engaged woman gently raises a hard subject. These letters are famous not because they're perfect, but because they're honest, and because archives, families and editors took the trouble to keep them.

If you'd like to start your own letter with a name that feels just right, try the free nickname generator on our homepage. You choose who it's for (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, fiancé or fiancée, crush or partner) and a vibe such as cute and sweet, romantic, funny, flirty, unique or classic. Each suggestion comes with a short note on why it works, and you can keep favorites on a shortlist or blend your names with the Couple Name Mixer.

Famous Love Letter Writers by Era

Here is a quick side-by-side of some of the writers in this guide, grouped the way the article groups them, with a line or detail to remember each one by.

Writer	Era in this guide	A line or detail to remember
Henry VIII	Tudor and Stuart	"My heart and I surrender," and a signature with Anne's initials set inside a heart
Dorothy Osborne	Tudor and Stuart	"The share you have in my heart"
Richard Steele	Eighteenth century	"Tenderly, passionately, faithfully thine"
John Adams	Eighteenth century	"Miss Adorable" and a mock legal "order" for kisses
Napoleon Bonaparte	Revolution and Romanticism	"To live for Josephine"
John Keats	The Romantic age	"I cannot exist without you" and three summer days as butterflies
Emma Wedgwood	Victorian	"We now do belong to each other"
Robert Browning	Victorian	"I love your verses with all my heart"

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most famous love letter of all time?

There's no official ranking, but a few letters are quoted far more than others. Beethoven's letter to his Immortal Beloved is probably the most famous, partly because of its mystery: the library that holds it, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, says the recipient has never been identified. Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne, Napoleon's letters to Josephine and the courtship letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett are also among the most widely read love letters in English.

Who was Beethoven's Immortal Beloved?

Nobody knows for certain. The letter, written in pencil over two days in July, never names the woman, and it was found among Beethoven's papers after he died. A 19th-century English edition named Countess Giulietta Guicciardi and dated the letter to 1800, but later scholars questioned both the date and the identification. The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, which holds the original, describes it as perhaps the most puzzling document of Beethoven's life and says the recipient has not been established.

Where can I read John and Abigail Adams's love letters?

The Massachusetts Historical Society publishes many of them free online through its Adams Family Papers electronic archive. You can read John's playful courtship letter of 4 October 1762, which opens with Miss Adorable, and Abigail's later letters that open with My dearest Friend. Each page shows a transcription of the letter, and many include an image of the original. It's one of the best places online to watch a long marriage unfold through letters.

What did Keats write to Fanny Brawne?

Keats wrote Fanny Brawne a series of intense, tender letters, beginning in the summer of 1819. In a letter postmarked 3 July 1819 from Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, he wished they were butterflies living just three summer days. In one postmarked 13 October 1819, he wrote that she had carried him away by a power he couldn't resist and that he could not exist without her. The letters were first published in an edition by Harry Buxton Forman, with remarks dated 1878.

How did Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett meet?

They met through a letter. On 10 January 1845, Robert Browning wrote to Elizabeth Barrett, already a well-known poet, praising her poems. His first line was I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett. She replied the next day, thanking him from the bottom of her heart. Their courtship continued through hundreds of letters over 1845 and 1846 before they married. Browning kept every letter in a box, numbered in his own hand, and they were later published in full.

Did Henry VIII really write love letters to Anne Boleyn?

Yes. A series of seventeen letters from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn survives, eight in English and nine in French, according to the introduction to a published edition that refers to them as part of the Vatican collection. They include lines like my heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands, and some are signed with Anne's initials drawn inside a heart. Because some letters were in French, English versions of those are translations, so wording varies between editions.

Are old love letters in the public domain?

Letters written centuries ago by people who died long ago are generally in the public domain, which is why the letters in this article can be quoted and read freely. Modern letters are different. Letters by people who died more recently, or letters first published recently, may still be under copyright in some countries, and rules vary by place. If you want to reprint a modern letter at length, check its copyright status first or quote only a short excerpt with credit.

Why did people write such long love letters in the past?

Mostly because they were apart and had no faster way to talk. Letters were how couples kept in touch across distance, whether it was John Adams on a diplomatic mission, Napoleon on campaign or Keats on the Isle of Wight. A letter might take days or weeks to arrive, so writers packed in news, feelings and questions. Many letters were also read aloud, kept and reread, so writers took care with them in a way we rarely do with quick texts.

How can I write a love letter like the famous ones?

Borrow their habits rather than their exact words. Open with a name only you use, like John Adams's Miss Adorable. Share one ordinary moment from your day, as Richard Steele and Dorothy Osborne did. Choose a single vivid image, the way Keats chose butterflies. Say one plain, true thing, like Abigail Adams's Ever remember me as I do you. Then sign off with a pet name or symbol that's yours. A short, honest letter usually means more than a long, flowery one.

Sources

We checked every source below while writing this guide. Last reviewed October 30, 2026, by Joan Ramos.

1. The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn; With Notes (Project Gutenberg)
2. Selected English Letters (XV-XIX Centuries) (Project Gutenberg)
3. John Adams to Abigail Smith, 4 October 1762 (Massachusetts Historical Society, Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive)
4. Abigail Adams to John Adams, 23 December 1782 (Massachusetts Historical Society, Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive)
5. Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 (Project Gutenberg)
6. Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 (Project Gutenberg)
7. Beethoven pur in Ausstellung "Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt" (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
8. Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne (Project Gutenberg)
9. Letter no. 441: Emma Wedgwood to Charles Darwin, 21-22 November 1838 (Darwin Correspondence Project, University of Cambridge)
10. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1, 1845-1846 (Project Gutenberg)