Creative Engagement: My favorite Fake Letters

First off, I realize that we are studying British Literature up until the eighteenth century, but my favorite author is Jane Austen. With that being said, her novel, Pride and Prejudice from the nineteenth century, although fictional, can be used as a historical source of the political and social life at the time. My favorite letter from this novel is Mr. Darcy's to Elizabeth Bennett. This is the turning point in the novel in which Eliza realizes that Mr. Darcy is not nearly as proud as she once believed. Here's the link if you wish to read the letter since it is quite lengthy.

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppv2n35.html#letter6

My reasoning for this creative engagement comes from our concentration this week on letter writing and I thought that it would be appropriate to introduce the other side of this form of literature. In the past it was not uncommon for fake letters to be written to create a book. By no means were they forms of communication that existed between people, but they were used as entertainment. You can compare these letter books from the past to one's that we have today that are a composition of emails, text messages or ims. I guess I just thought that it was interesting how this tradition of documenting everyday communications has carried over into our literature today.