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DOES anyone still write love letters? Or is modern romance now conducted through snapchats and texts? How often these days do distant pals drop d one another a line?

Of course, we are all communicating, all of the time. But to what purpose? I feel continually besieged by emails, though few merit answering. How would I respond if a love letter popped up in my inbox? File, then t forget it? Leave it languishing in ‘drafts’? Boomerang it for later?

A longform, longhand letter, however, thrills. These missives occupy a vaunted place in literature that it is hard to imagine any computerised text toppling. The happiness of many cherished characters pivots on a well-executed epistle.

What if instead of writing again to Elizabeth Bennet after her rejection, a dejected Mr Darcy had vented on Twitter, then gone on Tinder. I know, it doesn’t bear thinking.

In Gill Hornby’s latest novel, Miss Austen, the authoress Jane’s surviving older sister Cassandra, descends on the vicarage home of family friends. She has come seeking her and her sister’s old letters.

Her aim is to protect her sister’s growing literary reputation, but also to preserve her own privacy.

Possession, by AS Byatt, begins with a young English academic discovering two drafts of an urgent passionate letter hidden in the leaves of a rare book. Roland Mitchell recognises the hand as that of Randolph Henry Ash, the Victorian poet he is studying. But who on earth was Ash so entranced by? Roland’s search becomes a dazzling literary detective tale.

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff uses the author’s 20-year correspondence with a bookshop in London, to recount a touching cross-Atlantic friendship. At first, Hanff seems overly communicative; her British correspondents — predominantly manager Frank Doel — rather diffident. Soon, however, their humour and shared passion for books sparks a connection.

A portrait of not just their characters, but Austerity Britain and booming post-war New York emerges.

This week, I am going to sit right down and write someone a letter.