Confessions and Confidences - Academic and Cultural History Revisited in Letters and Other Documents of Life

This anthology draws readers into the epistolary worlds of mainly 20th-century academic and cultural figures in the Baltic region, especially Finland. At the time of writing, many of these individuals, while pursuing vocations in folklore research, linguistics, ethnography and creative writing, suffered hardships and feelings of uncertainty, something to which their letters attest. The extensive citations of the letters allow readers a firsthand view of the content, style and register of their authors' epistolary prose. Besides practicing close reading, the contributors, in their search to grasp the interconnectedness of archives and fieldwork, draw theoretically from the study of correspondences, life writing, emotional communities and scholarly personae to interpret these private and occasionally idiosyncratic writings. However personal, these communications also reflect the zeitgeist of their times.