Pen Pals and Culture: How Letters Between Strangers Connected the World

A pen pal is someone you get to know mainly through letters, usually a stranger, often in another country, sometimes for a few months and sometimes for the rest of your life. For much of the twentieth century, being matched with a pen pal was one of the few ways an ordinary child could talk directly with someone on the other side of the world. Classrooms swapped bundles of letters, magazines printed lists of names and addresses, and international clubs matched members by age and interests. The internet was supposed to end all this. Instead, letter-based friendship has changed shape: postcard exchanges that have moved tens of millions of cards, apps that deliberately slow messages down, and old pen pals who finally meet after forty years of writing.

This article looks at where pen pals came from, the postal infrastructure that made them possible, the organisations and school programmes that matched them, some real pen-pal friendships and what they changed, the digital-era revival, the risks, and some common misconceptions. Facts, dates and figures come from the sources listed at the end.

What a Pen Pal Is

A pen pal relationship is a friendship carried on mainly by correspondence. The two people are usually strangers when they start, matched through a school, a club, a magazine, a website or an app. The relationship is generally built on cultural exchange and friendship rather than business, and it may involve letters, postcards, small parcels, photographs and sometimes language practice.

Where the word came from

The older British term is "pen-friend". According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "pen-friend" is recorded from 1919, and "pen pal" gradually replaced it. Etymonline dates "pen pal" to 1931; Merriam-Webster gives an earlier first known use of 1925. The word "pal" itself comes from Romani, where it means "brother" or "comrade", and entered English slang in the late seventeenth century.

The timing is revealing. The term arose in the years after the First World War, when international friendship was being promoted as a way to prevent another war, and when school systems and youth organisations were beginning to organise international correspondence on a large scale.

Pen pals versus other correspondents

Not every long correspondence is a pen-pal relationship. Business correspondents, family members writing across distance and lovers writing during separation are all correspondents, but they usually knew each other first. The defining feature of the pen pal is that the letters create the relationship rather than continuing one. That said, the boundary is blurry, and some of the most famous letter friendships, discussed below, began as business and turned into something else.

The Infrastructure That Made Pen Pals Possible

Pen pals depend on something easy to take for granted: a reliable, affordable way to send a letter to a stranger in another country.

Cheap domestic post

National postal reforms in the nineteenth century made letters cheap. Britain introduced a uniform penny rate on 10 January 1840, paid by the sender, and other countries adopted similar systems. Cheap prepaid postage was the first condition for writing to people you did not know: when the recipient paid, as under older systems, writing to a stranger was an imposition.

The postcard

The postcard was invented in the second half of the century. The first official postcards were issued in Austria-Hungary on 1 October 1869, and the format spread quickly. Postcards were cheaper than letters, quick to write, and carried an image of the sender's home town, which made them ideal for exchanges between strangers. Postcrossing, the modern postcard-exchange project, marked the postcard's 150th anniversary on 1 October 2019 and has held World Postcard Day on 1 October each year since 2020.

The Universal Postal Union

International mail was the bigger obstacle. Before 1874, sending a letter abroad meant navigating a maze of bilateral treaties, different rates and transit charges through each country on the way. On 9 October 1874 the Treaty of Bern created the General Postal Union, which united its member countries into a single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of letters. Sources differ slightly on whether 21 or 22 countries took part at the start. The organisation was renamed the Universal Postal Union (UPU) at its 1878 Paris congress.

The UPU made international correspondence predictable: a letter could be posted in one member country and delivered in another under common rules. Without that, international pen-pal schemes would have been impractical.

The International Reply Coupon

One practical problem remained. If you wanted a stranger abroad to write back, you could not easily send them stamps, because your stamps were not valid in their country. The UPU's answer was the International Reply Coupon, created by the Convention of Rome of 26 May 1906. A coupon bought in one country could be exchanged in another for the stamps needed to send a reply. For decades, pen-pal clubs and listings suggested enclosing a reply coupon when writing to a new correspondent overseas.

How Pen Pals Were Matched

Schools and teachers

Schools were among the most important matchmakers. Teachers saw international correspondence as a way to teach geography, languages and writing, and to build international understanding.

One American example is the Student Letter Exchange of Waseca, Minnesota. According to a 1959 report in the New Zealand newspaper The Press, its founder, Robert Mishek, was a high-school teacher in Waseca who first conceived of a letter exchange in 1934 as a way to broaden his pupils' education. The system worked through schools: American teachers requested names of children aged 10 to 19 in other countries, and overseas teachers supplied class lists with each pupil's age, sex and address, so students could be paired.

Pen-pal programmes between schools continue today in many forms, from individual teachers pairing classes to European programmes such as eTwinning, which connects schools across countries.

Clubs and organisations

Pen-pal clubs matched individuals, often for a fee, by age, gender, language and interests. One of the longest-running is International Pen Friends, founded in Dublin in 1967. It arranges correspondence in several languages, and recent reports say it has connected more than two million people over its history.

Many clubs were small, run by individuals or volunteers, and lasted only a few years. Others were attached to religious groups, youth movements, hobby societies or language communities. Esperanto speakers, for example, have long used correspondence to practise the language with speakers in other countries, since the whole point of Esperanto is international communication.

Magazines and newspapers

Listings in magazines and newspapers were another major route. A young reader would send in a name, age, address and interests, and the publication would print a column of "pen pals wanted" notices. Readers then wrote to whoever caught their eye.

One such route connected Michelle Anne Ng in Singapore with Sonya Clarke Casey in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1982, when Ng was twelve. Accounts differ about the exact mechanism: Clarke Casey had sent her details to the International Youth Service, a now-defunct Finnish organisation that connected teenage pen pals, while Ng recalls finding the contact in a magazine that listed international pen pals. Ng said she wanted to improve her written English and learn about other cultures, adding: "Besides, there was no internet in the 1980s."

Television and popular culture

Television and comics helped make pen pals a familiar part of childhood. The 1970s children's programme Big Blue Marble, about children in other countries, invited viewers to write in for a pen pal. In Charles Schulz's Peanuts, Charlie Brown's struggles with his pen pal became a running joke; when he switched from a fountain pen to a pencil, his "pen pal" became a "pencil-pal". Pen pals appear in many films, including the Bollywood films Romance (1983) and Sirf Tum (1999), Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and the animated Mary and Max (2009), about an Australian girl and an American man. You've Got Mail (1998) updated the idea for email.

Real Pen-Pal Friendships

Some of the most powerful evidence for what pen pals mean comes from individual stories, a few of which have been documented in books and the press.

Caitlin and Martin: Pennsylvania and Zimbabwe

In 1997 Caitlin Alifirenka was a twelve-year-old seventh-grader in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, whose class was corresponding with children around the world. Asked to choose a country, she picked Zimbabwe, which, as she later put it, "sounded the most far-flung and exotic". Her letter reached Martin Ganda, who lived in a poor suburb of Mutare, where his father worked at a paper mill. According to a New York Times review of their later book, Martin, a fourteen-year-old top student, received one of the few letters that reached his class.

The correspondence lasted six years and changed both their lives. Caitlin learned about poverty she had not imagined; Martin sometimes could not afford postage or school fees. Caitlin sent care packages and sometimes her allowance, and, according to Publishers Weekly, a $20 gift let Martin pay his school fees and continue his education. Her family later helped him find scholarship opportunities in the United States. Martin attended Villanova University and later earned an MBA at Duke University. Caitlin's mother had saved the letters, photographs and records of packages and money transfers, and their joint memoir, I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives, written with Liz Welch, was published by Little, Brown in April 2015.

The story is unusual in its outcome, but typical in many details: the classroom assignment, the choice of a faraway country, the slow discovery of very different lives, and the material realities of postage and money that shaped what could be written.

Michelle and Sonya: Singapore and Newfoundland

Michelle Anne Ng and Sonya Clarke Casey, introduced above, wrote to each other for more than four decades without meeting. Their letters covered school, sports, relationships and news from their countries. They exchanged Christmas gifts and cards. Clarke Casey wrote about seeing Prince Charles and Princess Diana in Newfoundland and about her marriage and motherhood; Ng sent photographs of new landmarks in Singapore. During the Covid-19 pandemic they swapped updates about vaccination.

In October 2025, both aged fifty-five, they finally met when Ng flew to St John's, Newfoundland, and Clarke Casey met her at the airport with a sign. Ng described the meeting as "fabulous and emotional". Stories like theirs, of pen pals meeting after decades, appear regularly in local and national news, and they show one of the defining features of pen-pal friendship: it can survive for a lifetime with almost no face-to-face contact.

Helene Hanff and Frank Doel: a bookshop correspondence

Not every famous letter friendship began as a pen-pal arrangement. In 1949 Helene Hanff, a New York writer, answered an advertisement in the Saturday Review of Literature from Marks & Co., a second-hand bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road in London. Her orders were handled by the shop's chief buyer, Frank Doel. Over twenty years the business correspondence became a friendship that drew in Doel's family and the shop's staff. Hanff sent food parcels to help with Britain's post-war shortages; the shop sent her books.

They never met. Doel died in December 1968, and Hanff, who had kept postponing her trip to London, visited the empty shop only in the summer of 1971. She published the letters as 84, Charing Cross Road in 1970, and it was adapted for television, radio, the stage and, in 1987, a film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Strictly speaking the two were business correspondents rather than pen pals, but the book has become one of the best-known portraits of a friendship that existed almost entirely on paper.

Letters across political lines

Correspondence between strangers has sometimes taken on political meaning. During the Cold War, letters between children in the United States and the Soviet Union were promoted on both sides as gestures of goodwill. The best-known example is not a pen-pal exchange but a single letter: in 1982 ten-year-old Samantha Smith of Maine wrote to the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov asking about the risk of war, received a reply, and was invited to visit the Soviet Union in 1983. Her story shows how a child's letter to a stranger could become a symbol of international communication at a tense moment.

A short timeline of the pen-pal world

Why Pen Pals Mattered Culturally

A window on other lives

Before cheap travel and the internet, most people had few ways to learn about daily life in other countries except through books, films and news, all of which were filtered through other people's interests. A pen pal offered something different: a direct, personal, unpolished account from someone of the same age. Children learned what their counterparts ate, what music they liked, what school was like, how holidays were celebrated and what worried them.

Language learning

Many pen-pal relationships were set up for language practice. Writing to a native speaker gave students a reason to use a foreign language and exposed them to everyday expressions not found in textbooks. Michelle Anne Ng's wish to improve her written English is a typical motive. Pen-pal pairings for language learners, sometimes with each partner writing partly in the other's language, remain a common feature of school programmes and online services.

Writing as a skill and a habit

Regular correspondence builds writing habits. A pen pal letter requires the writer to describe their own life clearly to someone who knows nothing about it, a demanding exercise in explanation. Teachers have long valued pen-pal schemes for this reason, apart from any cultural benefits.

Material culture: stamps, postcards and keepsakes

Pen-pal letters are physical objects. Many correspondents collected stamps from the envelopes, and stamp collecting and pen-palling often went together. Letters might include photographs, pressed flowers, stickers, drawings, banknotes, sweets wrappers or small gifts. Postcards carried pictures of landmarks and landscapes. Old pen-pal letters are often kept for decades, as Caitlin Alifirenka's mother kept hers, and they become family archives.

The value of slowness

A letter takes time to write, days or weeks to arrive, and time to answer. Pen pals have often described this slowness as part of the appeal: anticipation, the pleasure of finding a letter in the mailbox, and the thought that goes into a reply that cannot be instantly corrected. Some modern services deliberately recreate this delay, as described below.

Pen Pals in the Digital Age

Decline of the paper letter

Email, social media and messaging apps made it easy and free to talk to people anywhere instantly. Traditional postal pen-pal relationships declined, and many clubs closed or moved online. Other organisations survived by adopting internet technology, using websites to match members who might then correspond by email or by post.

Postcrossing

The most striking success of the digital era is a project built around physical mail. Postcrossing was launched on 14 July 2005 by Paulo Magalhães, a Portuguese engineer, as a hobby, initially run from an old computer in a closet at his home. The name is loosely based on the book-sharing site BookCrossing.

The system is simple:

1. A member requests an address and receives a randomly chosen member's address and a unique postcard ID, such as "US-787".
2. The member writes the ID on a postcard and mails it, paying for the card and postage.
3. When the recipient receives it, they register the ID on the website.
4. Once the card is registered, the sender becomes eligible to receive a card from another random member.

Two members can exchange directly only once through the random system, and each member starts with a limit of five cards in transit at a time, rising with experience up to 100. The principle is reciprocity: you receive as many cards as you send.

The scale is large. Postcrossing reached 1 million registered postcards on 11 April 2008, 10 million on 27 January 2012 and 80 million on 7 January 2025. By late 2026, according to the figures on its Wikipedia page, it had more than 806,000 members in 208 countries and territories and more than 88 million registered postcards. Germany, the United States and Russia are the largest senders.

Postal services have taken notice. The Dutch postal service PostNL issued the first Postcrossing-themed stamp in 2011, and many national postal services have issued their own since, a measure of how significant the project has become to the postal world.

Postcrossing is not exactly a pen-pal service, since most exchanges are single postcards between people who may never write again. But it has brought very large numbers of people back to the post box, and it keeps alive several of the habits pen pals always had: choosing a card that shows something of your home, writing a few lines about your life to a stranger, and waiting to see what arrives in return.

A Postcrossing card is also a small cultural document. Senders often explain the picture on the front, describe the weather or a local festival, mention what they are reading, or ask the recipient a question. Many members collect the stamps, and some say on their profiles what kinds of cards they like, such as maps, local landmarks or animals. In that sense the project organises, on a very large scale, what pen pals had done informally for a century.

Slowly: delay by design

The app Slowly, first released for iOS on 14 February 2017 by Slowly Communications, applies the logic of the postal letter to digital messaging. Letters between users are delivered after a delay that depends on the physical distance between them, from about half an hour for nearby users to around sixty hours for the most distant, according to one description, or "a few hours to a few days" in the app's own store listing. Users can see estimated delivery times and track letters "in transit", and a recipient cannot read a letter until it "arrives". The developers report getting complaints both that delays are too short and that they are too long. The design is a deliberate argument that slowness is part of what made pen pals meaningful.

Dear Data: postcards as art

In 2014 and 2015 two information designers, Giorgia Lupi in New York and Stefanie Posavec in London, sent each other a hand-drawn postcard every week for a year. Each card visualised data about a theme in their own lives that week, such as how often they checked the time. The project, called Dear Data, became a book, Dear Data: A Friendship in 52 Weeks of Postcards, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the original postcards and sketchbooks for its collection. It is a reminder that letter friendship can also be a creative collaboration.

Letters to Juliet

One of the most unusual correspondence traditions is the Juliet Club in Verona, Italy, which answers letters addressed to Juliet, the heroine of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. People began sending letters to Juliet in Verona in the 1930s, asking for advice about love. Giulio Tamassia founded the club in 1972, and it is now run by his daughter, Giovanna. Volunteers known as "secretaries" reply to the letters, many by hand. Estimates of the number of letters received each year vary widely, from about 5,000 in a 2002 report to more than 10,000 in more recent accounts. The 2010 film Letters to Juliet brought new attention and new volunteers. Here the correspondent is fictional, but the replies come from real strangers, and the tradition captures something of the pen-pal impulse: writing honestly to someone you will probably never meet.

Prison Pen Pals

A distinctive branch of pen-pal culture involves people in prison. Websites allow prisoners to post profiles seeking correspondents, and because inmates in the United States and most of the world cannot use the internet themselves, these relationships are usually conducted by postal mail. Supporters argue that correspondence reduces isolation and helps prisoners maintain contact with the outside world. Correspondents are generally advised to learn the prison's rules on mail, which often restrict what can be sent, and to be thoughtful about how much personal information they share.

How a School Pen-Pal Programme Works

Because schools have been the largest single source of pen pals, it is worth describing how a typical classroom exchange is organised. The details vary, but most follow a pattern much like the Student Letter Exchange model described above.

Finding a partner class. A teacher finds a school abroad, through a formal programme, a professional network, a twinning arrangement between towns, or personal contacts. The two teachers agree on the age range, the number of pupils, the language or languages to be used and how often letters will be sent.

Matching pupils. Teachers exchange lists of pupils, often with ages and interests, and pair them. Mismatched numbers are a constant headache: one class may be larger than the other, as Martin Ganda's experience of a class receiving far fewer letters than it had pupils shows, and some pupils end up with two partners or none.

Writing the first letter. Younger pupils are often given a framework: introduce yourself, your family, your school, your town, your favourite food and hobbies, and ask a few questions. Older pupils write more freely. Teachers may check letters before they are sent, both to help with language and to make sure no inappropriate personal details are shared.

Sending in bundles. Letters are often posted together in a single parcel, which is cheaper and simpler than individual envelopes, and handed out in class when they arrive. The arrival of the parcel can be one of the most exciting days of the school year.

Keeping it going. Many exchanges fade after a few rounds, especially once the school year ends. A minority of pupils continue writing privately, and these are the pairs who sometimes end up corresponding for decades.

For teachers, the attraction is that a pen-pal exchange combines writing practice, geography, a foreign language and personal motivation in one activity. A pupil may not care much about an exercise in describing a town, but will work hard on a letter that a real person of the same age in another country is going to read.

Writing Across Cultures

Writing to a stranger in another country involves more than language. Pen-pal advice has long included reminders about cultural differences, and correspondents often learn as much from misunderstandings as from information.

Forms of address. Some cultures expect more formal openings than others, and the use of first names, titles or family names varies. A cautious first letter tends to be slightly more formal than the writer would use at home.

Dates and numbers. Different countries write dates in different orders, so a date like 03/04 can mean 3 April or 4 March. Measurement units, currencies and school grade systems all need explaining.

Holidays and religion. Pen pals frequently exchange cards and small gifts for holidays, and discovering which festivals the other person celebrates is often a highlight of the correspondence. It is also an area where assumptions can cause awkwardness.

Wealth and difference. The story of Caitlin and Martin shows how much difference in material circumstances can shape a correspondence. A gift or a casual mention of possessions can mean something very different to someone with much less money. Curiosity and generosity tend to work better than showing off.

Politics. Pen pals in countries with tense relations, or under governments that monitor mail, may not be able to write freely about politics. Correspondents learn to be aware of what the other person can safely say.

What Old Pen-Pal Letters Tell Us

Pen-pal letters are a little-used but rich historical source. Because they were written by ordinary people, often children, to strangers who needed everything explained, they record everyday details that rarely appear elsewhere: what a school day was like, what things cost, what families ate, what music was popular, how people felt about news events. A run of letters over many years can document a whole life, as the Ng and Clarke Casey correspondence records school, marriage, motherhood and a pandemic.

They also preserve material culture: stamps, postmarks, stationery, photographs and enclosures that show how people presented themselves. And they show the infrastructure of communication at work, in references to delays, lost letters, the cost of postage and the arrival of new technologies.

Few of these letters reach archives. Most stay in shoeboxes in family homes, and many are thrown away. When a family keeps them, as Caitlin Alifirenka's mother did, they become a record that can later be turned into a book or simply a family history. Anyone who has a box of old pen-pal letters has, in a small way, an archive of international friendship.

Risks and Safety

Scams

Any system that connects strangers can be abused. Romance scams, in which a fraudster builds a relationship and then asks for money, are a serious problem in online correspondence. The US Federal Trade Commission reported that in 2023 more than 64,000 people reported romance scams, with total reported losses of about $1.14 billion and a median individual loss of $2,000, the highest reported losses of any form of impostor scam. Common warning signs include a correspondent who quickly professes strong feelings, avoids video calls or meeting, and then has an emergency that requires money, gift cards or cryptocurrency.

Privacy

Traditional pen-pal listings printed full home addresses, which would now be considered risky. Modern services typically protect addresses until both parties agree to exchange them, or use the service itself as an intermediary. Postcrossing, for example, gives each sender only one member's address at a time, chosen at random.

Children

For children, adult supervision of pen-pal correspondence is widely recommended. School-run programmes, where teachers handle the matching and letters pass through classrooms, have built-in safeguards that open online services may not.

Practical safety habits

A few common-sense habits help:

• Use a matching service that protects addresses until you choose to share them, or consider a post office box.
• Never send money to someone you have only met through correspondence, however convincing the story.
• Keep identifying details limited in early letters: school name, workplace and daily routines can wait until trust is established.
• Be wary of rapid intimacy, especially combined with reluctance to video chat.
• Report suspicious behaviour to the platform and, where relevant, to consumer protection authorities.

Common Misconceptions

"Pen pals died out with the internet"

Postal pen-palling declined, but it did not disappear. International Pen Friends still operates, Postcrossing has more than 800,000 members, apps such as Slowly attract users looking for slower conversation, and school programmes continue to pair classes across countries.

"Pen pals were always children"

School programmes made pen pals strongly associated with childhood, but adults have always used clubs and listings to find correspondents, and many childhood pen-pal friendships continued for decades into adulthood.

"A pen pal is just a friend you text"

Most people use the term for a relationship built on longer, more considered messages, whether on paper or digitally. Part of the culture is the time and care that goes into each letter.

"International mail was always simple"

International correspondence became routine only after the Universal Postal Union was created in 1874, and even then practical problems such as paying for replies needed solutions like the International Reply Coupon of 1906.

"Pen pals are mainly about romance"

Romance does occur and is a favourite theme of films, but most pen-pal relationships are friendships built on curiosity, cultural exchange and language practice.

How to Find and Keep a Pen Pal

If you want to try pen-palling, here are some practical steps, based on how the established services and programmes work:

1. Decide what you want. Language practice, cultural exchange, a hobby connection or simply friendship each suggest different services.
2. Choose a format. Paper letters, postcards, email or a slow-messaging app all have different rhythms.
3. Pick a reputable route. School programmes, long-running clubs and well-established services have clearer rules and safety features.
4. Write a good first letter. Introduce yourself with specific details: your town, your daily routine, what you are reading or listening to. Ask a couple of questions, but not a questionnaire.
5. Match your partner's rhythm. Some people write weekly; others write every few months. Agree on expectations, or at least be patient.
6. Include small things. Postcards, photographs and stamps are traditional and appreciated.
7. Be honest about gaps. Life gets busy. A short note saying you will write properly later keeps a correspondence alive.
8. Keep the letters. Many pen pals say rereading old letters years later was one of the greatest pleasures of the friendship.

Comparing the main routes

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a pen pal?

A person you get to know mainly through letters or other written correspondence, usually a stranger when you begin and often from another country.

When was the term "pen pal" first used?

Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1925, and the Online Etymology Dictionary to 1931. The earlier British term "pen-friend" is recorded from 1919.

What was the first international postal agreement?

The Treaty of Bern, signed on 9 October 1874, created the General Postal Union, renamed the Universal Postal Union in 1878. It made it possible to send letters between member countries under common rules.

How did children find pen pals before the internet?

Mostly through school programmes, pen-pal clubs and listings in magazines and newspapers. Teachers exchanged class lists with schools abroad, and organisations matched young people by age and interests.

What is Postcrossing?

A project launched in 2005 by Paulo Magalhães in which members send postcards to randomly selected members around the world and receive cards from others in return. By late 2026 it had recorded more than 88 million postcards.

Is Postcrossing the same as having a pen pal?

Not quite. Most Postcrossing exchanges are one-off postcards. But some members start longer correspondences with people they meet through it.

What is the Slowly app?

A messaging app, first released in 2017, that delivers letters after a delay based on the distance between sender and recipient, imitating the pace of postal mail.

Are pen-pal websites safe?

Reputable services have safety features, but any service that connects strangers carries risks, especially romance scams. Never send money to someone you know only through correspondence, and protect personal details until you trust the person.

What is an International Reply Coupon?

A coupon, created by the Universal Postal Union in 1906, that can be bought in one country and exchanged in another for the postage needed to send a reply. It let pen pals pay for each other's replies across borders.

Have pen pals ever met after many years?

Yes, many times. Michelle Anne Ng of Singapore and Sonya Clarke Casey of Newfoundland, who began writing in 1982, met for the first time in October 2025.

Conclusion

The pen pal grew out of a particular combination of things: cheap postage, international postal agreements, school systems eager to teach about the wider world, and a hope after the First World War that friendships between ordinary people could make nations less suspicious of one another. For much of the twentieth century it gave millions of children and adults a direct, personal connection to someone in a country they might never visit. The stories that survive, from a seventh-grader in Pennsylvania who helped a boy in Zimbabwe stay in school to two schoolgirls who wrote for forty-three years before meeting in Newfoundland, show what a few pages in an envelope could do. The form has changed, and many conversations have moved to screens, but the desire behind it has not. Tens of millions of postcards sent through Postcrossing, apps that slow messages down on purpose, and volunteers in Verona answering letters to a fictional girl all point to the same thing: people still want to write to a stranger and wait, with some excitement, to hear back.

Sources

• Pen pal (Wikipedia)
• Pen pal (Online Etymology Dictionary)
• Pen pal (Merriam-Webster)
• Universal Postal Union: History
• Universal Postal Union (Wikipedia)
• Treaty of Bern (Wikipedia)
• The Press (Christchurch), 28 May 1959, on the Student Letter Exchange (Papers Past)
• The Penny Post (Victorian Web)
• Postcrossing (Wikipedia)
• Postcrossing Press & Media
• Publishers Weekly: Childhood pen pals share their remarkable story in new book
• I Will Always Write Back (Hachette Book Group)
• Mothership: 43-year pen pals from Singapore and Canada meet
• The Star: Pen pals for 43 years meet in person
• 84, Charing Cross Road (Wikipedia)
• International Pen Friends (Penpalling & Letters)
• Slowly (app) (Wikipedia))
• Slowly Help Center: When will my penpal receive my letter?
• MoMA: Dear Data, Week 52
• Pentagram: Dear Data
• Folger Shakespeare Library podcast: Juliet Will Answer
• The World: Letters to Juliet offer love, hope and human connection
• Christian Science Monitor: No love (letter) is lost in the land of Romeo and Juliet
• FTC: Love stinks when a scammer is involved