In museums, provenance is sacred. A delicate chain of ownership, era, and intent that gives an object its place in the hierarchy of meaning. Who owned it. Who made it. What it survived. Where it sat before it arrived here — before we arrived at it.
But what, then, of fictional artifacts? What of the paper trail built not from discovery but from design?
At The Postscript Society, we practice a kind of archival worldbuilding — not in service of forgery, but of feeling. We do not impersonate history. We invite it into being.
What we make is fiction. But fiction, too, requires provenance — or rather, something that behaves like it.
And so we invent.
We craft letters with invisible fingerprints. Postmarks from imaginary towns. Receipts for meetings that never occurred. Love notes tucked inside boarding passes. We make the supporting documents of an emotional history. We invent entire drawers of correspondence for people who never lived — but might have.
We call this invented provenance.
And it is how we build truth.
1. The Aura of the Archive
Walter Benjamin once wrote that an original work of art has an “aura” — the ineffable presence it carries as an object with a past.
We chase that same aura in the fiction we make.
But instead of relying on age or authenticity, we create intimacy. Not is this real, but this feels real. And that shift — from factual to felt — is where the magic begins.
We do not print pages; we send paper lives.
And the more fragmented, the more layered, the more “found,” the stronger the aura becomes. A smudged ink blot. A misspelled name. A monogrammed hotel receipt that never explains itself. These are not glitches. These are evidence. Of character. Of plot. Of a story already in motion.
We ask the reader to be not just an observer — but an archivist, too.
2. Fiction as Found Object
Imagine opening an envelope and discovering:
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A typed letter dated 1932 with a faint scent of tobacco.
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A telegram scrawled on the back of a dance card.
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A thank-you note never sent, folded into an old theatre program.
These are not excerpts. They are objects. And objects, even when invented, carry the weight of having belonged.
By creating these fictional artifacts — and placing them in the reader’s hands — we build a tactile timeline. One in which the story doesn’t simply happen, but has already happened, and you are the one uncovering it.
This is narrative archaeology. Storytelling by way of dust and linen thread.
It is why we resist exposition and lean into implication. Our stories do not arrive in chronological clarity — they unfold like a trove found in a cedar drawer. Layered. Loose. Full of ellipses.
3. The Elegance of Implied History
Invented provenance works best when it whispers.
We do not label our clues. We do not annotate. Instead, we scatter and trust.
A bank slip from a fictional institution tells you about class. A family crest embossed in green tells you about ego. A burned edge on a letter suggests what could not be said aloud. A crossed-out line, left legible, reveals what was too honest to send.
These fragments create friction — between what’s told and what’s withheld.
And in that friction, the reader begins to participate. To assemble. To interpret.
This is not simply literary technique. It is design strategy.
We are not just writing stories — we are building belief.
4. Emotional Plausibility Over Historical Accuracy
We are not, strictly speaking, historians.
We are emotional realists.
We research eras to understand sensibility, but we are not afraid to invent the rest. A fictional boarding school. A long-shuttered scent library. A playbill for a never-written ballet. These are our tools.
Our fiction is filled with historically informed impossibilities.
And that’s precisely why it resonates.
The letters feel real because they obey emotional logic.
The archives feel weighty because we’ve written around their absences.
Even our envelopes are selected not just for beauty, but for mood.
Even the stamps are stories.
5. Why We Make What Doesn’t Exist
Some might ask: why go to all this trouble for things that never were?
Because we believe fiction can carry the same emotional resonance as history.
Because sometimes, what should have been archived… wasn’t.
Because invented provenance is a way of honoring unrecorded lives.
We’ve written letters from women history forgot.
We’ve mailed telegrams from performers who might have danced had the curtain ever risen.
We’ve folded love stories into menus, photographs, ribbon scraps.
And we’ve seen how readers hold these things — not as merchandise, but as memory.
Because what is fiction, if not the memory of a world that almost was?
6. The Art of the Unverifiable
The success of invented provenance lies in its restraint.
We don’t explain everything.
We don’t sign every name.
We leave gaps.
We plant footnotes without sources.
We reference volumes never published.
This makes the archive feel lived-in, not curated.
It’s why our letters might mention another character’s correspondence you never receive. It’s why the documents you doreceive sometimes contradict. This is not sloppiness. This is intentional ambiguity — the lifeblood of true archival work.
In fiction as in life, the most believable archives are never complete.
In Closing: A Box of Stories, and a Key
When you open a story from The Postscript Society, you are not just entering a narrative.
You are stepping into an invented archive — a box of whispers, receipts, declarations, and things left unsaid.
Each mailing is a drawer in a fictional cabinet.
Each object is a clue, a remnant, a gesture.
And while none of it ever truly existed, you will feel as if it did.
Because we built the provenance for what might have been.
And in your hands, it becomes what was.
With reverence for what could still be uncovered,
The Head Archivist
The Postscript Society
