How to Use epistolary in a Sentence

epistolary

adjective
  • The two struck up an epistolary romance and were married in 1969.
    — Washington Post, 12 Mar. 2021
  • Two of her novels are epistolary, so that the characters take turns speaking in the first person.
    — Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, 22 July 2019
  • Our epistolary friendship challenged the idea of his creativity, pushed him to start writing again.
    — Holly Gleason, cleveland, 17 Mar. 2021
  • This epistolary novel tracks the lives of various people living in the midst of a zombie plague over a period of years.
    — Milan Polk, Men's Health, 24 Oct. 2022
  • And a version of those letters became the epistolary framing for the novel, which came together in only three months.
    — New York Times, 5 June 2022
  • There is an epistolary chapter that reads less like a series of emails than a diagram of human manipulation.
    — Lauren Mechling, Vogue, 21 Mar. 2022
  • The epistolary impulse, Tiller knows, often comes from a desire to correct or to confess, and to extract meaning from the mess of our days.
    — Alejandro Chacoff, The New Yorker, 3 Jan. 2022
  • In this epistolary novel, the author asks, and answers, how does a person who experienced such profound loss become whole again?
    — Karin Tanabe, Washington Post, 31 Oct. 2022
  • Ubisoft wants to build worlds, and the company is accomplishing it with a unique companion book that is part survival guide, part epistolary novel.
    — Mo Mozuch, Newsweek, 23 Feb. 2016
  • The title refers to his epistolary relationship with a fellow student, also in the closet, also on the verge of coming out.
    — Gary Thompson, Philly.com, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Instead, Lee and Francis stayed up, poring over Dale’s epistolary diary.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 8 Oct. 2025
  • In this epistolary science fiction novel, time travel agents Red and Blue are fighting for different sides in a war.
    — Emily Burack, Town & Country, 24 Jan. 2023
  • Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, this epistolary romantic novel tells the story of two time-traveling rivals who fall in love.
    — Emily Burack, Town & Country, 20 Mar. 2022
  • Lee said that gap in epistolary history gave her the creative license to imagine how van Gogh’s Paris experiences set the stage for what was to come.
    — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Nov. 2021
  • But Jack and Louise’s son, Ken Ludwig, recreated them from the stories his parents told him about their epistolary courtship.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 June 2021
  • Hirshman turns these epistolary spats into page-turning reading, revealing backbiting and pettiness more at home in a teenage clique than in a moral crusade.
    — Lydia Moland, BostonGlobe.com, 3 Feb. 2022
  • The shift from an epistolary narrative to a more dramatic staging of conversation slyly replicates the evolution of the novel as a form.
    — Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 31 May 2021
  • Its ingredients are a boxful of old letters stored in the attic of his house by a bookish and kindly uncle, his sudden death, and a niece who inherits the epistolary bounty.
    — John Banville, The New York Review of Books, 23 Sep. 2021
  • But brands other than Netflix have started scoring PR points for their lawyers’ thoughtful epistolary approaches.
    — Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Ironically, there’s something very old-fashioned about the central conceit, which is basically an epistolary romance—but one whose letters soar across space and time.
    — Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic, 2 Jan. 2026
  • As adaptor, Williams is faithful to the novel, not least its epistolary structure, the narrative moving between characters.
    — Demetrios Matheou, HollywoodReporter, 18 Feb. 2026
  • Her main epistolary focus was always on interactions with her children, who (like Jackson) managed to see the world in all its freshness, horror and glory.
    — Scott Bradfield, Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2021
  • The film, which documents an epistolary bond between two lonely souls, gives Khan a role that bears amusing parallels to his Salaam Bombay!
    — Mayukh Sen, The Atlantic, 30 Apr. 2020
  • To date, all the commands arise from an epistolary relationship maintained 100% through the Internet.
    — Javier Hasse, Forbes, 27 May 2021
  • The trio, who share a house and the epistolary project, are all past Renaissance Festival players, experienced in taking on personas.
    — Kevyn Burger Special To The Star Tribune, Star Tribune, 11 Dec. 2020
  • During the 19th century, the scientific journey became an epistolary venture in which distance became a metaphor for reach.
    — Eleanor Jones Harvey, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Mar. 2020
  • Reading his contributions to these epistolary exchanges, one is struck by his startling lack of hubris or defensiveness—his openness, even late in his career, to advice and criticism.
    — Mark Ford, The New York Review of Books, 25 May 2022
  • This epistolary poem is directed to a friend of the speaker’s, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who died in 2021.
    — Aracelis Girmay Victoria Chang, New York Times, 30 Sep. 2022
  • Attachments is an epistolary novel with You’ve Got Mail vibes and late 1990s nostalgia.
    — Literary Hub, 3 Apr. 2026
  • An epistolary novel is structured by the pursuit of human connection, and in the case of Perks, the gesture is unvarnished in its earnest, almost puppyish, hopefulness.
    — Hazlitt, 4 May 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'epistolary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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