Can you think of a literary genre that, once thriving, has gone entirely defunct? Don’t say the Yellow Pages: That’s not exactly a literary genre — even though some fine poems have been written about them, such as Barbara Hamby’s “I Beseech Thee, O Yellow Pages.”

No, I mean a whole genre that has disappeared.

I collect books in a defunct genre, as it happens: The Life and Letters of [some respected litterateur]. It used to be that when a literary person died, someone close to the decedent, either a friend or a family member, would write to the decedent’s correspondents to ask for letters that might be compiled into a book. The genre was at its height of popularity for about a century — from, say, 1850 to 1950.

The formula was a familiar one: a short account of the life followed by a selection of biographically illuminating letters. Typically, such a book would appear a few years after the subject’s death. For Washington Irving (d. 1859), it took four years to assemble four volumes. For Michael Faraday (d. 1867), it took three years and two volumes. For Charles Darwin (d. 1882), it took five years and two volumes.

The fashion for such books sometimes led to historical compilations — revivals, so to speak. In 1899, the poet and critic Edmund Gosse assembled the two-volume Life and Letters of John Donne (d. 1631). In 1913, the novelist and historian Anna de Koven published her two-volume work The Life and Letters of John Paul Jones (d. 1792). And in 1914, a historian named Preserved Smith brought out his second edition of The Life and Letters of Martin Luther (d. 1546).

The more contemporaneous collections were often about relative unknowns, as if the compilers were trying to bolster the standing of a marginal figure. Perhaps the contemporaries overestimated the enduring appeal of their departed friends. Or perhaps the epistolary anthologies were meant for the living, without much thought for posterity. There are published lives and letters of such now-obscure figures as Richard Harris Barham (1870), John Bellows (1904), Sydney Dobell (1878), Frederick William Faber (1869), Edward A. Freeman (1895), John Gibson Lockhart (1897), and Phoebe Palmer (1876). I don’t mean to denigrate these writers. In fact, the mere fact that their letters were considered publishable is something of a recommendation.

When the fashion began waning, it became embarrassing to use the exact life-and-letters formula in the title. In 1944, the Viking Press issued The Letters of Alexander Woollcott, from the famous drama critic who had died the year before. The editors followed the familiar pattern, with an 18-page biographical introduction. They explained their method in a prefatory note: “To prepare this book, we wrote to his known friends and published notes in the literary journals, asking that his letters be sent to us. . . . We received a generous collection — perhaps one thousand — to select from, and of these we have chosen those which seemed of the greatest general interest.”

To this day, the Woollcott collection is captivating. His letters began when he was ten years old, writing in August 1897 to his public-school teacher: “Dear Miss Sorber, / Please don’t detest me for not answering your lovely letter. Well I flatter myself I did answer it but I lost it and somehow I let the days slip by. / Do you remember, on the last day of school you read about the Indian chief, Pontiac, and you spoke of Evangeline. Well the other day I got it out and read it and I entirely agree with you as to its being fine.” What precociousness.

Such collections illustrate just what’s possible with letters. They can be short and sweet, as Woollcott was when writing in 1933 to Beatrice Kaufman, one of the editors of the book, from Neshobe Island, Vt.: “Beatrice: / You must come here some part of this and every summer. It is my favorite place in all the world. I am simply exhausted from buttering so many griddle cakes and can write no more. / A.W.”

Or they can be playful and cheeky, as when Woollcott wrote in 1933 to his friend Frank Sullivan, a fellow columnist at the New York World: “Dear Frank: / I should like to dine with you Monday evening. I think that old room at the Plaza is closed evenings but the other room is pretty nearly as good. What do you say to meeting me there or at chez Pulitzer, where a cocktail assemblage seems to be scheduled for that evening. Telephone here and leave word tomorrow. I shall be rushing around the Atlantic Littoral on sundry trains and boats, but don’t envy me too much, for this life of ceaseless fame and adulation has its drawbacks just as your own obscure one has. / A.W.”

Woollcott was always flexing his literary muscles. Writing to Sullivan in 1937, he concluded, with impeccable timing: “I thought you would like to hear about the telegram just sent by the printers on a small-town Connecticut newspaper to the foreman of the composing room on the occasion of his marriage. It consisted of one word — ‘Stet.’ / A. Woollcott.”

If the life-and-letters category is now defunct, that’s just a by-product of the moribundity of letters themselves. We can’t really foresee a new genre: “The Life and Emails of X.” It seems never to have been attempted.

If you’ve decided to stand out from the crowd by sending letters to your friends and family, you might try this, if you haven’t already: Think of the two or three people you most admire who lived in the late 19th or early 20th century. Order their published letters and browse through them from time to time. You may simultaneously draw inspiration and wonder how these notables ever got anything else done.