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I am not in academia, but I think if you would use the present tense for a book, then a letter — which presumably has to be published for you to have access to it — would fall under the same rule. ...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T12:00:06Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5207 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T02:14:55Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5207 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
I am not in academia, but I think if you would use the present tense for a book, then a letter — which presumably has to be published for you to have access to it — would fall under the same rule. Otherwise you have something like, "John Adams writes in _Defence of the Constitution_ that England is a monarchical republic, but in his letter of 1 March 1776 to his wife, Abigail, he wrote that he thought England was 'an instance of the indifferent led by the inbred into iniquity.'" The switch in tense might be jarring.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2012-03-09T18:54:24Z (over 12 years ago)
Original score: 2