Letters of Engagement, 1884-1888: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge

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The archives of the Hope-Troubridge alliance are endless, yet fascinating. Laura Troubridge's early journals dating from 1873 up to her engagement to Adrian Hope in 1884 have already been published as Life Amongst the Troubridges : Journals of a Young Victorian 1873-1884 (0953474607) and now these letters between Adrian and Laura during their long engagement from 2 August 1884 to exactly four years later -- 2 August 1888, continue the story up to their marriage. Laura collected their 'engagement letters' and arranged them in date order to form a continuous running dialogue. They used to think of their letters as being the next best thing to talking face to face and the daily posts being considerably faster and more frequent than those of today, their answers or comments on exchanges of news are near enough to the original questions to make this 'conversational' aspect ring true. Their love letters over this engagement period of four years are equal in length to four average novels and massive cuts were necessary to arrive at a readable package.