Diana Athill's childhood in the Norfolk countryside was idyllic. At the age of fifteen, she fell in love with a young undergraduate. They became engaged and traveled to Oxford. Then everything fell apart in the cruelest possible way.

In this classic modern memoir, Athill dissects the terrible consequences of loss and her struggle to rebuild a personality destroyed by sadness. Yet for all its unhappiness, Instead of a Letter remains a story of hope, written with the frank intelligence and lack of self-pity that have become the hallmarks of her writing.