Karin Michaëlis sent love letters disguised as business letters. "I kiss you - wherever you want", she wrote to her publisher, Peter Nansen - and added: "Please use my letters as Fidibus - they are too private." But Nansen did not burn the letters.
HC Branner saved other people's letters as well as his own. When his son Jens Branner reprinted the letters from his father in the memoir Opbrud, he shortened them without telling the readers. He made HC Branner more toothless and less intellectual than he was.
When Edvard Brandes was the first to publish JP Jacobsen's letters, he removed the places where Jacobsen signaled that his letters would one day be published. Jacobsen must not be accused of vanity. But Brandes knew very well that many poets skew towards eternity when they write letters.
John Chr. Jørgensen gets close to letter writers and letter publishers in this book. A number of different letter types are presented: the love letter, the friend letter, the business letter, etc. Central letter problems are analysed, for example: Who owns a letter – the one who wrote it or the one who received it? Who has the right to burn letters?
