Get to Know Baltimore Through Intimate Letters
Setting
the Family Free was not the only book published in
2019 that featured my writing.
Katherine Cottle has discovered that one of
the best ways to get to know a city is through the intimate letters of those
who lived in or visited it. That is well illustrated in her book, The Hidden Heart of Charm City: Baltimore
Letters and Lives.
She sheds new light on the city through the
examination of intimate letters by some of the city's most prominent residents
and visitors. From John Adams to Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass to
Harriet Tubman, Mark Twain to Ralph Waldo Emerson, F. Scott Fitzgerald to Edgar
Allan Poe, Cottle shows us Baltimore as it was to those who experienced it--in
a way that only personal letters between friends and loved ones can.
When Apprentice House Press asked me if I
would write the forward for her book, I instantly said yes. I was interested
not only because I know Katherine and her work, not only because I had read and
enjoyed this particular book, but also because of my own special love of
letters. In fact, I even wrote the forward as a letter to the reader. Here’s an
excerpt.
As
Cottle points out, a letter is more than a communication, more than a phone
call, text, or email. The time between writing and delivery gives it an element
of time-travel. The letter you write, destined for the future; the letter you
receive, a visit from the past.
Learn more about Katherine Cottle’s The Hidden Heart of Charm City at her
website.
https://www.katherinecottle.com
Labels: #AH, #ApprenticeHouse, #Baltimore, #Book, #CharmCity, #Forward, #HiddenHeart, #KatherineCottle, #Letters
posted by Khiara Foster | Thursday, November 19, 2020
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