This book contains the most romantic and most touching examples of the epistolary genre, undeservedly forgotten in our age of email and SMS messages. These love letters were written by outstanding people to their lovers in a variety of times and eras, in a variety of life circumstances. For some of these great men, love is “sweet poison” (William Congreve); for some - “a lovely meek wife on the sofa in front of the hot fire of the fireplace, with books and music” (Charles Darwin). Love can burn like the scorching sun (Henry VIII) or penetrate into the very depths of the heart like cool rain (Flaubert). Here are all the shades and tints of this great feeling: from the graceful eloquence and modest piety of Robert Browning to the surprisingly modern suffering of the Roman Pliny the Younger, immersed in work in order to forget how much he misses his beloved wife Calpurnia. Reading the love letters of great people, we understand that humanity, in essence, has changed little over the past two thousand years. Passion, jealousy, hope - we will find all these emotions here, along with the simple pleasure of sending a letter and receiving an answer from the person you love more than anything in the world. We will see that literary talent is not a necessary condition for a sincere letter of love, and it does not matter at all in what form it is written and in what way it reaches the addressee.