Charlie Addams’ Love Letters to His Valentine

In 1935, Addams –always “Charlie” to his friends—was in love with a hometown girl, 22-year-old Jewell Valentine Bunnell. She was beautiful, bright, creative, and fun-loving – “I think the fondness we have in common for cemeteries is one of the many reasons I love you,” Charlie wrote.

As Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life gets a new edition
some long-lost love letters written (and illustrated!) by the cartoonist have come to light.

[Michael Maslin’s] Ink Spill is fortunate indeed to have Ms. Davis’s “Addams In Love: Letters From A Young Cartoonist” make its debut here.

Addams’ biographer Linda H. Davis annotates the letters.

Fifteen years after the first publication of my Charles Addams biography, and on the eve of a new publication, a treasure has come my way: 15 love letters, deliciously written and buoyantly illustrated by a 23-year-old Addams.

Imagine my relief that nothing in them contradicts what I learned over the course of 6 years, as I slaved away, studying cartoon after cartoon (for which no one, including me, pitied me) with the full cooperation of Addams’s widow and intimates. But these letters do add to the picture, particularly of the cartoonist’s early years, when his career was starting to take off.

Fascination at Ink Spill.

 

One thought on “Charlie Addams’ Love Letters to His Valentine

  1. Wait a minute–there’s a biography of Charles Addams and I didn’t know about it? Thanks for filling me in. Addams was one of the cartoonists that got me interested in cartoons and collecting cartoon books, of which I now have more than 1,000. Finding a place for it on a shelf might be a problem…

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