ABSTRACT
During a war letters assume a heightened significance, and the Second World War can be seen as the last golden age of letter writing. More letters were probably written, posted, lost and received during the war than at any time before or since.2 The population as a whole, and women in particular, were exhorted to write letters as part of their patriotic duty; at the same time writing letters could help to keep the war at bay. Intimate and personal letters are sometimes construed as artless and transparent acts of self-expression, but we can detect in the letters written to and from mothers in the war a range of characteristics that align the letter-writer with the novelist. Letters by mothers can be read as masterpieces of simulated conversation and character creation, fictions of spontaneity; letters to mothers can reveal the problems of finding an appropriate personal language in wartime.
