The 10 Best Love Letters Ever Written

The Best Romantic Love Letters Ever WrittenAlamy.

In today's digital age, writing love letters can feel like a prehistoric practice. (These days, the closest you'll likely get to a romantic note is a 2 A.M. text that says: "U Up?") But despite our unfamiliarity with this very charming gesture, there was once a time when writing love letters was the most chivalrous way to win someone over. (Just look at Noah from The Notebook for proof.) Luckily, the Internet has become a home for many of these storied works; but as with most things, not all love letters are created equal. There's a certain quality to the long-forgotten romantic letter that some just got right. So, to show the world how it's done, we've rounded up the 10 most romantic love letters of all time, from Ernest Hemingway's sweet notes to his best friend Marlene Dietrich, to Frida Kahlo in her steamy writings to husband Diego Rivera. Here: A master class in affectionate prose.

1. Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich

Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Ernest Hemingway was a prolific, confident writer, but in his letters to actress Marlene Dietrich, he shows a more vulnerable side. Hemingway wrote Dietrich, his best friend, approximately 30 letters between 1949 to 1959, but as Dietrich's daughter, Maria Riva, explains in a New York Times article, the two were merely close friends, (though his words seem to reveal a much more flirtatious relationship).

"I can't say how every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home," he writes.

2. Napoleon to Joséphine

While known for his ruthlessness, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte also possessed a softer side. In letters to his wife, Joséphine, the military leader reveals a vulnerability not found in his autocratic approach to expanding the French empire. And while he later divorced her when she could not have children, Napoleon continued to write to Joséphine for years after their separation. In one particular letter, penned while Napoleon was commanding the French army near Italy a few months after their marriage, he expresses, quite romantically, how much he misses his wife.

"Since I left you, I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you. Incessantly I live over in my memory your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solicitude. The charms of the incomparable Joséphine kindle continually a burning and a glowing flame in my heart. When, free from all solicitude, all harassing care, shall I be able to pass all my time with you, having only to love you, and to think only of the happiness of so saying, and of proving it to you?"

3. Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera

It's no secret that Frida Kahlo and her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera, had a tempestuous relationship, but in her love letters to Rivera, you see only an intense love. Kahlo's letters to Rivera stretch across the twenty-seven-year span of the couple's relationship, and underscore the unmistakable connection (however frenzied) the two shared. In one letter from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, Kahlo points to that deep, emotional intimacy.

"Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightning. The dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours."