Envelope Poems

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American poet. She lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. Most of her friendship was therefore carried out by correspondence.

After her death, Lavinia (Dickinson's younger sister) kept her promise and burned most of the poet's correspondence. Luckily, she had left no instructions about her 40 notebooks filled with poems. So most of Dickinson's work was published posthumously.

In the mid-1990s, while examining Dickinson material, the literary historian Marta L. Werner came across a small collage cut from recycled envelopes and covered with Dickinson's handwriting. After a search for similar items, she found dozens of semi-intact envelopes, fragments and scraps that showed sentences or entire poems pencil-written by Dickinson. So a good way to reuse the plain envelopes we get!

All the 52 envelope poems have been gathered into a book: Emily Dickinson: The Gorgous Nothings, published by New Directions and Christine Burgin.

More information in this article.

Charles Dickens's Personal Postbox

Can you imagine that you send so many letters that you have your personal post box at home? Let's say more than 14,000 letters over fifty years?

So did Charles Dickens. He requested a letterbox to avoid the steep one-mile road to the village of Higham. The postal service installed in 1859 a wall box at his residence, Gad's Hill Place (nowadays a school). It was one of the earliest to be introduced in Britain.

The Letter Box Study Group and the Charles Dickens Centre Charitable Trust have recently asked the Royal Mail to put back the postbox in service. Unused since 1990, it was recommissioned the day before yesterday. You can see here the ceremony: how Dickens' great-great-granddaughter sent the first letter through this box to her own granddaughter, who is currently Dickens' youngest descendant.

A special Dickensian postmark will be applied to any pre-Christmas mail posted in the box.

(More about this news here.)

Sir Rowland Hill

Sir Rowland Hill was an English teacher, inventor and postal reformer. He came up with the solution of prepayment, facilitating the safe, speedy and relatively cheap transfer of letters. He is usually credited with originating the basic concepts of the modern postal service, including the invention of the postage stamps.

(Stamp sent by John - the UK)

Belle van Zuylen

Isabelle de Carrière (1740-1805), aka Belle van Zuylen was a Dutch writer, especially know by her letters, although she also wrote novels, pamphlets, music and plays. She kept up an extensive correspondence with numerous people, including well-know intellectuals like Constant d'Hermenches, James Boswell, Benjamin Constant, Ludwig Ferdinand Huber...

She died on 27 December, 208 years ago. How nice to dedicate a stamp to a tireless letters writer!

(Stamp sent by Heleen, from the Netherlands).

5th Taiwan Postcrossing Meetup

We're Sending You a postcard from Taiwan

Received from the 5th Taiwan Postcrossing Meetup hold in Taipei on June 7 and 8, 2013. On the back I counted the names of 19 postcrossers (Wow!). And, of course, the fantastic cancellation stamp designed by Taiwanese postcrosser Chiu:

(More information on this blog post).

Fred

It have been a great fun lately to take part in the mail art challenges of the Mail a Smile blog. As you know I was the lucky winner of challenge #1 and I received this amazing envelope as a prize:

And inside I found some stickers and... the nice Fred, whose name means 'peace' in Swedish. You can see that now he is peacefully sitting watching for my letters and postcards:

I had previously got another Fred, in the form of a beautiful green handmade card sent by Micu, as a thank you for my contribution to challenge #2:

  

You can see in the gallery all the handmade versions of Fred.

People and the Post

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has recently launched a new website dedicated to the men and women of the USPS.

People and the Post allows the visitors enjoy a variety of post stories. Some of them are even accompanied by a video. The site also invites current and former postal employees to share their stories and experiences about their time with the Postal Service.

More Than 40 Postcrossers

Sent by Tami (Germany).

I usually do not publish the back of the postcards. But on this postcard is any personal message. I am happy to publish it, because it comes from the 3rd International Bielefeld meetup 2012. And it is signed by more than 40 postcrossers! (among the signatures, I love especially the little lighthouse...).

By the way, the postcard fits in with one of my favourite subjects!

Melvin the Machine

I discovered Melvin (created by design studio HEYHEYHEY) thanks to Postcrossing blog. I'm not sure if we can consider Melvin exactly "people". But anyway: someone who stick a stamp so carefully can't be just a machine, don't you agree?

I Like Mail People

I like mail people. I mean, people who is happy by opening the mail box and finding something on it; people who is thankful with every mail; people who waste their time doing mail art, or writing long letters, or finding the right postcard and stamp for everybody... 

It's really nice when you send a mail to somebody, and they became extremely happy...

Ennio

Received from Ennio (Italy).

I've got this nice postcard some months ago. I've just realised that Ennio isn't here anymore.