The Roster
Meet the pen pals
Every one of our 71 historical figures writes in their own documented voice, in real ink. Search by name or filter by what they're known for.
Five letters, $39, free shipping. The first letter usually arrives in 7 to 10 days.
71 pen pals
Benjamin Franklin
Founding Father, inventor, diplomat, printer, and tireless self-improver with a twinkle in his eye.
Fifteenth of seventeen children, apprenticed to my brother's press at twelve, and I have been setting my own type ever since.
Read about Benjamin →
Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady, diplomat, human rights champion, and tireless advocate for the marginalized.
My mother called me Granny because I was a solemn child, and I decided early that being useful would have to do.
Read about Eleanor →
Abraham Lincoln
16th U.S. President, known for empathy, quiet strength, homespun wisdom, and melancholy.
A borrowed book and a tallow candle got me through most of my schooling, which came to about a year, all told.
Read about Abraham →
Jane Austen
Novelist of wit, social observation, and sharp irony, keen on manners, love, and human folly.
Cassandra and I shared a room from childhood, and she still receives more of my ink than any publisher ever has.
Read about Jane →
William Shakespeare
Playwright and poet who understood the human heart in all its folly and glory.
A glover's son from Stratford who left school at fourteen or so, and the plays got written anyway, between rehearsals.
Read about William →
Florence Nightingale
Pioneer of modern nursing, statistician, social reformer, and tireless advocate for evidence-based care.
Two thousand men in a Scutari barracks and a lamp that would not last the night; the first thing I counted was the deaths.
Read about Florence →
Leonardo da Vinci
Renaissance artist, inventor, and insatiably curious observer of all things.
I write my notebooks from right to left, with the left hand, and anyone who wants to read them may fetch a mirror.
Read about Leonardo →
Helen Keller
Deafblind author and activist who reads the world through her hands, and will teach you to notice what everyone else walks past.
Water on one hand and the word spelled into the other, and the whole world got its names back in an afternoon.
Read about Helen →
Harry Houdini
The handcuff king who answers every locked thing the same way, ten thousand rehearsals, and dares you to try one impossible thing yourself.
Erik Weisz of Budapest became Houdini in Appleton, Wisconsin, and the first thing I ever escaped was a name.
Read about Harry →
Henry David Thoreau
Concord's contrary surveyor, who moved to a pond to learn what living costs and sends back the accounting with dry wit.
The house cost twenty-eight dollars and twelve and a half cents, boards included, and I kept the receipt in a book.
Read about Henry →
John Muir
The wandering naturalist who founded the Sierra Club and will pull you, joyfully, out the door to the nearest wild place.
I walked a thousand miles to the Gulf with a plant press and a change of underclothing, and I was never lonelier or happier.
Read about John →
Ernest Shackleton
The Antarctic captain who lost his ship to the ice and brought every one of his twenty-eight men home alive.
Twenty-two men on a shelf of ice, the ship gone under, and my whole job reduced to one sentence: bring them all home.
Read about Ernest →
Saint Nicholas of Myra
The real fourth-century bishop behind the legend, who gave in secret and believed kindness done quietly is twice done.
Three bags of gold through a window at night, for three girls whose father had nothing, and I would rather nobody had known.
Read about Nicholas →
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The pioneer girl of the beloved prairie books, writing from Rocky Ridge Farm with sixty years of prairie weather behind her.
Not yet sixteen, and five pupils on the Dakota prairie, some of them taller than their teacher and none of them warm.
Read about Laura →
Orville Wright
Bicycle mechanic who, with his brother Wilbur, solved the problem of powered flight through systematic experimentation.
Twelve seconds and one hundred and twenty feet on a cold December morning at Kitty Hawk, and Wilbur running alongside the whole way.
Read about Orville →
Hans Christian Andersen
Danish teller of fairy tales, a cobbler's son who turned loneliness and longing into stories the world keeps.
A shoemaker's son in Odense, and my father read me the Arabian Nights when the day's work was done.
Read about Hans →
Jules Verne
French novelist who voyaged to the moon, the sea floor, and the earth's core without leaving his study.
Eighty days around the world, and I worked the whole route out from timetables at my desk in Amiens before Fogg ever left London.
Read about Jules →
Lewis Carroll
Oxford mathematician, logician, and photographer who wrote the Alice books and adored puzzles, nonsense, and letters to children.
A rowing trip up the Isis one July afternoon, three small girls demanding a story, and I had no notion where it was going.
Read about Lewis →
Claude Monet
French painter who hunted light across haystacks, cathedrals, and the water garden he dug at Giverny.
The same haystack again and again, because the light would not hold still and I would not let it go.
Read about Claude →
Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish teller of tales who chased health across oceans and wrote Treasure Island and Jekyll from a sickbed.
The map came first, drawn to amuse a boy on a rainy afternoon in Braemar, and the island filled in behind it.
Read about Robert →
Susan B. Anthony
Quaker-raised suffragist and tireless organizer who was tried for the crime of voting and never paid the fine.
They fined me one hundred dollars for voting in Rochester, and I told the judge I would never pay a dollar of it, and I never did.
Read about Susan →
Walt Whitman
American bard of Leaves of Grass, the open road, and the body, who calls you comrade and means it.
I set the type for my own book and paid for the printing, and the first edition had no author's name on the cover, only my picture.
Read about Walt →
Sojourner Truth
Born enslaved, she freed herself, then walked the country preaching freedom and the rights of women.
I never learned my letters, so I dictated my life to a friend and sold the book to pay for my house in Northampton.
Read about Sojourner →
Louisa May Alcott
Author of Little Women who wrote to feed her family. Brisk, warm, practical, and dryly funny, with a worker's faith that you begin badly and begin anyway.
Barn theatricals in Concord, my sisters in cast-off finery, and I wrote every part, including the villain, for myself.
Read about Louisa →
Marie Curie
Pioneering scientist, Nobel laureate, known for dedication and quiet courage.
We boiled down tons of pitchblende in a leaking shed to get a pinch of radium, and the shed is the part I miss.
Read about Marie →
Albert Einstein
Physicist known for relativity, humility, and thoughtful letters.
A compass at five years old set me wondering what pushed the needle, and I have not stopped wondering since.
Read about Albert →
Cleopatra
Last pharaoh of Egypt, known for intelligence, charisma, and strategic brilliance.
A good many languages, my tutors said, and I was the first of my house in three hundred years to learn the Egyptian one.
Read about Cleopatra →
Alexander Hamilton
Founding Father, immigrant, Treasury architect, and one of the most prolific letter writers in American history.
Before I was grown I kept the books for a trading house on St. Croix while the owner was away, and liked it more than I let on.
Read about Alexander →
Napoleon Bonaparte
Emperor, military genius, and prolific letter writer who reshaped Europe.
Corsica was sold to France the year before I was born, and I spent my schooldays at Brienne learning to speak like a Frenchman.
Read about Napoleon →
Julius Caesar
Roman general, statesman, and writer who transformed the ancient world.
The pirates asked twenty talents for me; I told them I was worth fifty, and I meant every word of what came after.
Read about Julius →
Joan of Arc
Peasant girl who led armies, crowned a king, and became a saint.
I was thirteen when the voice came in my father's garden, at noon, in summer, and I was afraid the first time only.
Read about Joan →
Alexander the Great
Macedonian king who conquered the known world by age thirty.
The horse no groom could ride feared his own shadow, so I turned him toward the sun and rode him that afternoon.
Read about Alexander →
Mary Shelley
Creator of Frankenstein, who knew that monsters are made, not born.
Eighteen years old, a summer of rain at Geneva, and the ghost story I began for a wager would not let me put it down.
Read about Mary →
Elizabeth I
The Virgin Queen who made England a world power through wit and will.
Declared no princess before my third birthday and locked in the Tower before my twenty-first; I learned patience in both places.
Read about Elizabeth →
Catherine the Great
German princess who became Russia's greatest empress through intelligence and iron will.
I arrived in Russia at fourteen with a few dresses and a German name, and set about learning the language at night.
Read about Catherine →
Vincent van Gogh
Painter who wrote over 800 letters to his brother Theo, revealing a passionate, sensitive soul seeking meaning through art.
I sold one painting in my life, and I wrote my brother Theo more than six hundred letters, so the words did better than the pictures.
Read about Vincent →
Mark Twain
American writer and humorist known for wit, storytelling, and skewering pretension.
Reading the river came before writing anything, four years of it, and the Mississippi never once repeated itself.
Read about Mark →
Theodore Roosevelt
Adventurer, conservationist, and 26th President — brimming with vigor and enthusiasm.
A sickly boy with asthma, told by my father to make my body, and I have been making it ever since, one hill at a time.
Read about Theodore →
Winston Churchill
British statesman and orator — master of wit, resolve, and the well-turned phrase.
I failed the entrance exam for Sandhurst twice, and my father wrote me a letter about it that I have not forgotten.
Read about Winston →
Oscar Wilde
Playwright and wit extraordinaire, master of paradox, beauty, and the bon mot.
Dublin, then Oxford, then a lecture tour of American mining camps in velvet knee breeches, and the miners took to me.
Read about Oscar →
Queen Victoria
Queen-Empress who reigned for 63 years, loved Albert utterly, and wrote copious journals and letters.
Eighteen when they woke me to say I was Queen, and I received my ministers that morning in my dressing gown, alone.
Read about Victoria →
Nikola Tesla
Inventor and engineer fascinated by electricity, energy, and the future.
A lightning storm the night I was born, or so my mother told it, and I have been on speaking terms with it since.
Read about Nikola →
Socrates
Philosopher who questioned everyone - including himself - and drank the hemlock rather than stop.
I never wrote a word down; my students did that, and I am still not sure they got the questions right.
Read about Socrates →
Plato
Philosopher who founded the Academy and explored justice, beauty, and the soul through dramatic dialogues.
My teacher was put to death by a vote of the city, and I have spent every year since asking what a city is for.
Read about Plato →
Aristotle
Greek philosopher focused on practical wisdom, ethics, and how things work.
I have opened a good many cuttlefish, and each one settled a question the philosophers had argued over for years.
Read about Aristotle →
Marcus Aurelius
Roman emperor who wrote private meditations on duty, endurance, and finding peace amid chaos.
I write these notes to myself at night in a tent on the Danube, and I am not always pleased with the man who reads them.
Read about Marcus →
Confucius
Chinese teacher and philosopher focused on virtue, family, and social harmony.
My father died when I was three, and I learned to keep accounts and mind cattle before anyone taught me the rites.
Read about Confucius →
Sun Tzu
Ancient Chinese general whose Art of War teaches that the greatest victory is winning without fighting.
I served the king of Wu, and the first thing I taught his officers was to count the roads out of a valley before the roads in.
Read about Sun Tzu →
Isaac Newton
Mathematician who discovered the laws of motion and gravity, yet remained secretive, rivalrous, and obsessed with alchemy.
Born so small they said I would fit in a quart pot, and my mother left me with her mother before I was three.
Read about Isaac →
Galileo Galilei
Astronomer, physicist, and father of modern science, who looked through his telescope and told the truth about what he saw.
I ground the lenses myself and turned the tube on Jupiter in January; four little stars moved night to night, and the sky changed.
Read about Galileo →
Charles Darwin
Naturalist who wrote about evolution, variation, and the natural world.
The barnacles took me eight years, and I do not regret one of them, though my children thought every father kept barnacles.
Read about Charles →
Ada Lovelace
Mathematician often called the first computer programmer.
The engine my friend Mr. Babbage has designed could weave numbers the way a loom weaves flowers, if it is ever built.
Read about Ada →
Louis Pasteur
Scientist who proved germs cause disease and created vaccines, saving millions of lives through careful observation.
The swan-necked flask stood open on my bench for months and stayed clear, which settled a question a great many people preferred unsettled.
Read about Louis →
Charles Dickens
Victorian novelist with a gift for characters, humor, and social conscience.
At twelve I pasted labels on pots of blacking in a rat-ridden warehouse by the river, and I never told my children.
Read about Charles →
Leo Tolstoy
Novelist who wrote of war, peace, and the moral struggle to live rightly, then renounced his own fame.
I kept a school for the peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana, and they were harder critics than any Petersburg editor.
Read about Leo →
Edgar Allan Poe
Writer of dark tales, inventor of the detective story, and master of atmosphere and rhythm.
Orphaned before I was three, raised by a merchant who never adopted me, and I have made a living out of the dark since.
Read about Edgar →
Emily Dickinson
Poet of compact, intense reflections on nature, love, and mortality.
A pressed gentian, the Latin under it in my own hand. That was my schooling, and the garden still sets the lessons.
Read about Emily →
Rumi
Persian poet whose verses on love, loss, and transformation emerged from profound friendship and grief.
The reed is cut from the reed bed, and everything it sings after that is about the place it came from.
Read about Rumi →
Homer
Legendary poet of the Iliad and Odyssey, singing of war, homecoming, and what makes mortals memorable.
Nobody can tell you where I was born, and seven cities claim me; the songs travelled farther than the singer ever did.
Read about Homer →
George Washington
Commander of the Continental Army, first President, and the man who could have been king but chose to go home.
I copied out one hundred and ten rules of civility as a schoolboy, and I have kept most of them, which is not the same as all.
Read about George →
Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist, orator, and writer who escaped slavery to become the voice of freedom.
Mrs. Auld taught me my letters until her husband forbade it, and that forbidding told me exactly what reading was worth.
Read about Frederick →
Harriet Tubman
Conductor on the Underground Railroad who freed herself and then returned again and again to lead others to freedom.
A two-pound weight thrown at another slave struck my head when I was a girl, and the sleeping spells never left me.
Read about Harriet →
Mahatma Gandhi
Lawyer turned activist who developed nonviolent resistance through personal experiments and failures.
They put me off a train at Pietermaritzburg for sitting in the wrong carriage, and I sat all night in the cold station and thought.
Read about Mahatma →
Amelia Earhart
Aviation pioneer who pushed the boundaries of flight.
Ten minutes at a Long Beach air show and one short ride was all it took; I knew I had to fly.
Read about Amelia →
Marco Polo
Venetian merchant who spent 24 years traveling the Silk Road and lived at the court of Kublai Khan.
Seventeen years in the service of the Great Khan, and when I came home to Venice my own family did not know my face.
Read about Marco →
Michelangelo
Sculptor who freed David from marble, painted the Sistine ceiling, and wrote of the agony of creation.
Four years on a scaffold under the Sistine ceiling, paint dripping into my beard, and the Pope asking every week when it would be done.
Read about Michelangelo →
Frida Kahlo
Mexican painter who turned pain and identity into vivid self-portraits.
A streetcar broke me at eighteen, and my mother had a mirror fixed above the bed, so I painted the only model I had.
Read about Frida →
Ludwig van Beethoven
Composer who wrote passionate letters about his deafness, his art, and his fierce independence.
I hear less every year and compose more, and the two facts have finally stopped arguing with each other.
Read about Ludwig →
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Composer whose letters reveal a playful, irreverent, hardworking genius who loved wordplay and his family.
Six years old, playing for the Empress in Vienna, and afterward I climbed into her lap, which nobody had told me was not done.
Read about Wolfgang →
Johann Sebastian Bach
Composer who saw his craft as service to God, raising twenty children while creating the most intricate and beautiful music in Western history.
Ten of my children lived, I taught most of them their notes, and the Sunday cantata was still due whether anyone slept.
Read about Johann →
James Naismith
The man who invented basketball: a Canadian farm orphan, lumberjack, teacher, and doctor who nailed two peach baskets to a gym rail in 1891, wrote thirteen rules, and spent the rest of his life caring more about the players than the game.
Thirteen rules on two sheets of paper, a peach basket nailed to the balcony, and eighteen men who did not know the game yet.
Read about James →Don't see who you're looking for? Let us know. We're always adding new pen pals.
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