The Letters Room

Einstein warned the President about nuclear fission's potential for weapons. Roosevelt read it and launched what became the Manhattan Project. One letter set the course of the 20th century.

Written to a mother who lost sons in the Civil War, this letter of condolence is considered among the finest prose Lincoln ever composed. Its humanity remains undimmed 160 years later.

Darwin confessed his theory of evolution "like confessing a murder" fifteen years before publishing On the Origin of Species. One of the most consequential private letters in the history of science.

Van Gogh wrote over 800 letters to his brother, often including sketches of works in progress. These are the most intimate records of an artistic mind ever published, and many contain the only surviving drawings of lost paintings.

Virginia Woolf's final letter, left on the mantelpiece before she walked into the River Ouse. Read as one of the most heartbreaking and tender farewells in literary history. She wrote two versions that morning.

Written two weeks before the Second World War began, Gandhi appealed to Hitler as a "friend" and asked him to stop. One of the most audacious letters ever written. A second followed in December 1941.

Nehru wrote 30 letters to his daughter from prison, later published as "Letters from a Father to His Daughter." He told her the history of the world as a bedtime story. Indira was 10 when the first arrived.

Written 25 years after witnessing the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. One of the oldest surviving eyewitness accounts written in letter form. The word "Plinian eruption" in volcanology comes directly from this letter.