Unseen Anne Frank letters illuminate life before confinement

A younger, lighter version of Anne Frank – a little girl with braces, who doesn’t want to have her hair cut and who has “no lack of companionship as far as boys are concerned” – has been revealed for the first time in English, through a series of previously unpublished letters written to her grandmother.

Part of the forthcoming Anne Frank: The Collected Works, the letters have never been published in full, or in English, before. They were written between 1936 and 1941, before Anne began the diary she kept from her 13th birthday on 12 June 1942, until the moment just over two years later when the Nazis raided the secret annexe where she had been living in hiding with her family.

In a letter believed to date to spring 1941, Anne writes to her grandmother of how “I have pretty long hair … Papa and Mama want me to get it cut but I’d much rather let it grow”. She also confides that “I have a little appliance in my mouth, and braces … Now I have to go to the dentist every week, and it comes out the next day. This has been going on for eight weeks, and I find it very unpleasant, of course.”

Later that year, she tells her grandmother of the birthday presents she has received: “From Papa and Mama a bicycle, a new school bag, a beach dress and various other things.