Epistolary Novels

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents.  The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used.  The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life.  It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view. 

The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in the works of such authors as Samuel Richardson, with his immensely successful novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749).  In France, there was Lettres persanes (Persian Letters) (1721) by Montesquieu, followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse  (Julie, or the New Heloise)  (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses  (Dangerous Liaisons) (1782), which used the epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly.  In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther)  (1774) and Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion  (1799). 

In her 2008 book Inventing Human Rights, historian Lynn Hunt argued that epistolary novels were important in spreading the idea of human rights in the 18th century because because the letter form allowed the reader to have a more direct contact with the suffering of the novel's characters.
 
Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savage burlesques.  The epistolary novel slowly fell out of use in the late 18th century.