Letters of Note recently featured a letter from Edgar Allen Poe to an editor apologizing for past drunken behavior and desperately asking a favor at the same time.
You must have conceived a queer idea of me – but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.
David Klaus, who contributed the link, comments:
I’d hazard a guess that a lot of editors have gotten this sort of letter over the years.