Margaret Laurence wrote to Adele Wiseman on 21 July 1963: ‘Your letters make me feel I actually exist.’ Almost two years later, on 23 February 1965, Wiseman requested Laurence to ‘Please write, to me and at your work. There are few other satisfactions.’ The most often repeated phrase in their correspondence was ‘Please write.’ Letters were a lifeline that allowed them to talk about the world they inhabited in all its complexity, anxiety, triumph, and variety; they articulated in the course of their long correspondence a core identity as writers and women. As importantly, each also expressed her need for...