In the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson's Bay Company sent men to its furthest posts along the coast of North America's Pacific Northwest, the letters of those who cared for the men followed them in the Company's supply ships. Sometimes, these letters missed their objects - the men had returned to Britain, or deserted their ships, or died. The Company returned the correspondence to its London office and over the years amassed a file of undelivered letters, Many of these remained sealed for 150 years until they were opened by archivist Judith Hudson Beattie, after the Company archives were moved to Canada. These letters tell the fascinating stories of ordinary people whose lives are rarely recounted in traditional histories. Judith Hudson Beattie and Helen M. Buss, a literary scholar, skilfully introduce us to the lives of the letter writers and their would-be recipients. Their commentaries frame, for contemporary readers, the words of early nineteenth-century working and middle-class British people as well as letters to voyageurs from Quebec. The stories of their lives - fathers struggling to support a family, widowed mothers yearning to see their sons, berest sweetheart