The Jessica Letters

Written as an exchange of letters, this 1904 collaboration follows Jessica Doane, a Georgia minister’s daughter who takes work reviewing books for a New York newspaper. Her correspondence with the paper’s editor, a worldly agnostic, begins over literature and gradually turns personal, and the two find themselves drawn together across a wide gulf of belief. Religion, philosophy, and the expectations of her father keep them apart for most of the book, so the drama plays out in argument as much as in affection. Corra Harris supplied Jessica’s voice while the critic Paul Elmer More answered as the editor, which turns the exchange into a genuine debate between Southern faith and Northern skepticism. It rewards readers who enjoy the epistolary form and the intellectual sparring of an unlikely romance.