100 great letters and diaries. Lomov V.

A letter as a kind of message came to us from the distant past. Diplomatic letters of Egyptian pharaohs, Mesopotamian and Chinese rulers have been preserved. There are letters of outstanding Romans, who left us brilliant examples of the epistolary genre, which are distinguished by philosophical depth and artistic expressiveness. These are the letters of Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Younger. The highest point in the development of epistolary art is considered to be the 18th and 19th centuries. At this time, letters become not only the most important means of communication between people, but also a literary genre.

The prototypes of diaries appeared in the form of clay tablets in ancient Assyria. In ancient Rome, reports were conducted on the acts of the emperors, as well as the records of dreams and their interpretation. In the Middle Ages, a peculiar diaries were chronicles, travel notes. The diaries in the modern sense appear in Europe only in the Renaissance.

The next book of the series tells about one hundred famous letters and diaries of various eras.