Chosen by Antonia Fraser: Love Letters: An Anthology

By MARGIE THOMSON

Sometimes heart-rending, sometimes almost impersonally eloquent, sometimes charmingly warm, these love letters are a delight to browse in, and an insight into their authors, most of whom are already famous.

Dora Carrington's letters to Lytton Strachey are possibly the saddest and most moving, but who could resist the passion and wistful, doomed idealism of Rosa Luxemburg for Leo Jogiches; the adoration of Zelda Fitzgerald for her brilliant, dissolute husband, F. Scott; Marcel Proust's declaration to Madame Straus: "I love mysterious women, since you are one ... " Fraser has made an idiosyncratic selection, based on her own predilections and "following her fancy".

The result: a lovely package, a vicarious pleasure.

Weidenfeld and Nicholson
$34.95