Welcome to Litsy!

A deeply moving look into romance and tragedy in the life of a Victorian–era Harvard student and his beloved wife, through journal entries, letters, and images of the actual diary. Her soul was the violet of my home, fragrant with heaven's own breezes, and lovely with a modest charm that kept me and keeps me her lover as in the days of yore. ––Francis Ellingwood Abbot, 1894 In 1857, at the age of twenty, a Harvard student named Francis Ellingwood Abbot met seventeen–year–old Katie Loring at a party in Concord, Massachusetts, and realized he had found his soul mate. An impetuous lover and a promising poet and thinker, Frank asked for her hand in marriage just weeks later, and began to record his thoughts and feelings in journals and in gorgeous letters. Collected here for the first time, Frank's witty, moving, and divinely sensitive writings reveal the deepest recesses of his heart as his love for Katie grew during their marriage. A beautiful keepsake and a rediscovered treasure, If Ever Two Were One is certain to be recognized as one of the greatest romances of all time.