Grief

Cicero to Quintus Cicero, 58 BC

Marcus Tullius Cicero · 13 June 58 BC · Thessalonica · also Family

Exiled from Rome and blaming himself for his brother's ruin, Cicero writes an anguished letter begging Quintus not to grieve on his account.

John Calvin to Pierre Viret, 1549

John Calvin · 7 April 1549

Calvin writes to his friend Viret that he is bearing the death of his wife with as much self-control as grief allows.

Michelangelo to Giorgio Vasari, 1556

Michelangelo Buonarroti · 23 February 1556 · Rome · also Friendship

Michelangelo, in his eighties, tells Vasari that the death of his devoted servant Urbino, after twenty-six years, has taught him how to face his own death.

Oliver Cromwell to Valentine Walton, 1644

Oliver Cromwell · 5 July 1644 · Before York · also Doubt and faith

Writing three days after Marston Moor, Cromwell reports a victory and then tells his brother-in-law that his eldest son is dead.

Samuel Johnson to Lucy Porter, 1759

Samuel Johnson · 23 January 1759

Johnson writes to his stepdaughter, grieving that he cannot make up to his late mother for how he treated her while she lived.

Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1804

Abigail Adams · 20 May 1804 · Quincy

Abigail Adams writes to console Thomas Jefferson on the death of his daughter Maria, whom Adams had cared for years earlier.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Karl Friedrich Zelter, 1830

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 21 November 1830 · Weimar

Goethe answers his friend Zelter's letter of sympathy after the death of Goethe's only surviving son, in restrained but grief-stricken terms.

Harriet Beecher Stowe to Calvin Stowe, 1849

Harriet Beecher Stowe · 29 June - 23 July 1849 · also Being ill

Over several weeks of a cholera epidemic in Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe writes to her husband urging him to stay away, and the letter ends as their young son is dying.

Thomas Henry Huxley to Charles Kingsley, 1860

Thomas Henry Huxley · 23 September 1860 · also Doubt and faith

Replying to a letter of religious consolation after his young son's death, Huxley lays out, point by point, why he cannot make himself believe in personal immortality.

Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, 1862

Abraham Lincoln · 23 December 1862 · Washington, D.C.

In the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln writes to the grieving daughter of a friend killed in action: 'You are sure to be happy again.'