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What are your favorite books of published letters and diaries? Recommendations?

I've read about half each of Virginia Woolf's letters & diaries and I find them to be just as fascinating as her novels. Edith Wharton was also a brilliant letter writer.

I don't think I can bear to wait until 2008 when the first volume of Susan Sontag's journal is published. And has anyone read Voltaire's letters? The group picture represents him, and from what I hear they're beyond delightful...

My sister gave me one of the books of James Lees-Milne's diaries, and I'm hooked!

I'm also enjoying Dorothy L. Sayers' letters; they've been published in several volumes.

Two books that I love (yet, curiously do not own) are Letters of E. B. White--I love most anything from White--and The Portable Dorothy Parker, as her letters in it are great.

I also enjoy anything by Henry David Thoreau, and I occasionally read his journal entries online from blogthoreau.blogspot.com.

I would love to read Virginia Woolf’s letters and I have been meaning to pick up Selected Letters of Dawn Powell as well.

I love collected letters. I can recommend these 5:

"The Letters of E.B. White"
"The Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald" (wow does he get picky)
"The Letters of Alexander Woollcott" (great stuff on the Algonquin Round Table)
"Letters From The Editor" (letters written by Harold Ross)
"The Portable Dorothy Parker" (Penguin Deluxe Classics edition, 2006)

I also should add James Thurber to the list of New Yorker-centric books of letters. There are 2 collections of his letters. One came out awhile back, that was heavily edited, by his wife I think. Just recently a new edition came out, with even more letters, with the permission of his estate. I have the new edition, and it shows that he was a real S.O.B. Brilliant, but not exactly a nice guy.

Kevin

Couldn't agree more with lilthcat about James Lees-Milne and his diaries.
I would like to add 'The Journal of a Disappointed Man' by W.N.P.Barbellion,All of the Frances Partridge diaries,the Beaton diaries and the Alan Clark diaries.
You might try looking at my catalogue under diaries for some useful titles.

Joe Orton. He LIVED.

Leslie Stephen's letters are amazingly full of humour, wit and interest. He details the society he mixed with in his day (including Tennyson and JS Mill), talks of his work on the DNB and also of his children's bedtime stories. A fascinating man.

The Nabokov-Edmund Wilson letters
The Ezra Pound-James Joyce letters
The Gustave Flaubert-Ivan Turgenev letters
The Henry James-Edith Wharton letters
If these are writers you are interested in, the letters provide much insight, interest and great writing

The Element of Lavishness : Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell 1938 - 1978

The Habit of Being : Letters of Flannery O'Connor

#10-nativeRoses: Because of your post, I ordered the Warner /Maxwell letters, and I have enjoyed them very much. I wouldn't have known about them otherwise. Thank you.

I have been recommended the James Lee-Milne diaries and since seeing the comments here will definitely endeavour to locate some.

I recently purchased Letters to Monica by Philip Larkin after hearing it as a 'Book of the Week' on the ever wonderful BBC Radio Four.

My absolute favourite diary anthology is The Assassin's Cloak - meticulously edited for humour, pithiness, pathos, tragedy, great writing - it's all there.