July 31st 1978.

This is my first letter to you. You have written so many to me over the time we’ve known each other, but this is the first one from me to you.

I often look up at the night sky and see the stars shining. There are so many of them, and they are all so far away that I feel as though I could never reach them, not even with all the time in the world.

So distant, so out of reach.

To be honest, I see you in them.

It has been so long since we last saw each other that I am beginning to forget your face. I only remember the feeling that would rise up whenever I looked at it. I felt safe, and yet you always seemed so far away.

How I wish I could feel that feeling just once more.

You will not receive this letter until after I have died, and that fact is more than just regrettable. Even so, I want you to continue your journey without me from now on.

Do not forget my name, and carry it with you always.

Top: A photograph of I. V. Stalin with his children Svetlana and Vasily at their dacha, circa. 1934

Left: I. V. Stalin's 1933 letter to the commandant of his dacha in Zubalovo, S. A. Efimov, about his children Svetlana and Vasily

If you’ve ever wanted to read someone else’s mail — historically, responsibly, and with library approval — good news.

Newberry Transcribe is our crowdsourced transcription site, where volunteers help make handwritten manuscripts from the Newberry Library’s collections easier to search, read, and discover. No special experience required — just patience, curiosity, and a willingness to spend a little time with someone else’s handwriting.

A while back, we added letters from Jenny Hecht to her father, Ben — and people loved them. Jenny’s letters are funny, strange, illustrated, dramatic, and sometimes magnificently unimpressed. Now we’ve added the correspondence from the other direction: letters from Ben Hecht to Jenny.

Ben Hecht was a Chicago journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and one of the writers who helped invent the fast-talking, wisecracking style of screwball comedy. In these letters, that voice turns personal: funny, affectionate, theatrical, and unmistakably dad-like.

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