Archival mail clubs

Real history, posted to you each month.

Crossed Letter publishes three mail clubs. Each month we print a piece of the past on good paper, add a note on what we know now, and post it to you.

Subscribe to Nature Printed Also open: The Packet and Gaslight.

After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen, who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeyings—the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea.

When I returned from the Nimrod Expedition on which we had to turn back from our attempt to plant the British flag on the South Pole, being beaten by stress of circumstances within ninety-seven miles of our goal, my mind turned to the crossing of the continent, for I was morally certain that either Amundsen or Scott would reach the Pole on our own route or a parallel one.

Amundsen reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Scott reached it thirty-four days later and died on the way back.

In August 1914 Shackleton sailed to cross the whole continent. His ship was caught in the ice before he could land.

Across: Ernest Shackleton, South (1919), from the preface. Crosswise, in blue: our note.

Three titles

Pick one, or all three.

The Packet

A new expedition every season, in the explorers’ own words.

First voyage: Shackleton’s Endurance expedition, 1914–1917, in three monthly dispatches. A letter from each ship, a chart panel that grows each month, and a slip of notes.

Open now. Dispatch I posts in the last week of November packet.crossedletter.com
Nature Printed

Two rare species a month, as the old naturalists drew them and as we understand them now.

A folded sheet with the original descriptions and what we know now, a watercolour postcard and a bookmark. No. I: the arched earthstar and the sandy stiltball.

Open now. No. I posts in the last week of October 2026 nature.crossedletter.com
Gaslight

The news of this month, exactly 150 years ago.

Four pages set as a Victorian paper: the reports, the crimes, the weather, the shipping and the advertisements, with a town of the month and a leaflet on what was really going on.

Open now. No. I, December 1876, posts in the last week of November gaslight.crossedletter.com

Why “Crossed Letter”

When postage was charged by the sheet, letter-writers saved money by filling a page, turning it a quarter turn and writing on across their own lines. The reader followed one direction, then the other.

We borrowed the name for the same pairing of two voices. Each of our titles sends the original, as it was first printed, with a short note from us on what we know now.

Why we post it

Crossed Letter is an invitation to slow down.

Once a month, something real comes through your letterbox: not a feed to scroll past, but paper to unfold, read slowly and keep. An expedition followed one dispatch at a time, as the world first heard it. Rare species, drawn by hand two centuries ago. The news as Victorian Britain read it, 150 years ago to the month.

We hope it brings you the pleasure of learning something new, a deeper wonder at the natural world and its history, and a slower pace of life, with time to read, to notice and to look again.

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