Visual Correspondence: Analysing Letters through Data Visualisation

Seán MacDiarmada Letters

Together with his close friend, Thomas Clarke, Seán MacDiarmada was crucial to the 1916 Easter Rising and a signatory of the Irish Proclamation. Discover more through his correspondence.
Patrick H. Pearse Letters

Before 1916, Padraig Pearse was an educational innovator, a writer, a powerful orator and advocate of the Irish language. After 1916 he became synonymous with the Easter Rising in Ireland. Find out more about his life through his letters.
Visualizing Hemingway: A Man in Letters

The John F. Kennedy Library have published a blog post on how Visual Correspondence's tools can illuminate the life of Ernest Hemingway. Using data from the Library's detailed finding aid, correspondence from over 50 years of the author's life has been collated and visualised on this site. Read the blog post here. or start visualising his letters.
Elia Kazan: Selected Letters

A cultural giant of the Twentieth Century, Elia Kazan directed productions like 'On the Waterfront' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire' for the stage and screen. He worked with writers such as John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, as well as actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Robert De Niro. Find out more about his life through his letters.

Letters on this Date

Letter writing is a rich and ancient form of communication. It offers deep insights into the thoughts, feelings and experiences of people from every walk of life in a more immediate way than almost any other medium. As well as the content of letters, the set of circumstances surrounding a letter's creation, transmission and reception tells a story in itself.

Data visualisation strives to make sense of the large and complex, condensing and clarifying complicated data in a single image. It can achieve an impact that words simply cannot replicate.

Visual Correspondence uses data visualisation to makes sense of a person's life through their correspondence. Who they wrote to, who wrote to them, when and where - these flashes of detail unveil a rich narrative about people and our past through images.

As well as providing tools to visualise huge collections of correspondence, in bringing together detail on 165327 letters from 56 collections, Visual Correspondence provides a new way to explore the letters themselves. Links to the full text of the letters are provided were possible and added information helps put the letters in context. Hopefully in exploring this site, you will start to see correspondence in a new way.

Choose a collection and start to visualise

Visual Correspondence

Analysing Letters through Data Visualisation

Seán MacDiarmada Letters

Patrick H. Pearse Letters

Visualizing Hemingway: A Man in Letters

Elia Kazan: Selected Letters

Letters on this Date