On the envelopes of letters sent to a dear friend, the famed artist and writer Edward Gorey drew dozens of original illustrations--illustrations now collected in this volume along with marvelously playful selections from the correspondence, all never before seen by the public until now.

From Ted to Tom will be published in the centenary year of Edward Gorey's birth.

When Tom Fitzharris met Edward Ted Gorey in 1974, the two quickly struck up a friendship. Over the next year Gorey sent a total of fifty letters to Fitzharris. Every envelope Fitzharris received was illustrated by Gorey, and filled with surprises: typewritten letters with news and opinions from Gorey's life, handwritten note cards with unexpected quotes, sketches, inside jokes, and a host of other joyous miscellany.

Assembled here for the first time, these envelopes and their contents deliver all the humor, imagination, gossip, and wonder that came with being Edward Gorey's pen pal.

The passionate but doomed epistolary love affair between a Czech translator and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial.

Extraordinary...touching, horrifying, brilliant, sickly, [and] heartbreaking.... The most significant key we have for a reading of the author's novels and short stories. --The New York Times

In no other work does Franz Kafka reveal himself as in Letters to Milena, which begins as a business correspondence but soon develops into an epistolary love affair. Kafka's Czech translator, Milena Jesenská, was a gifted and charismatic twenty-three-year-old who was uniquely able to recognize Kafka's complex genius and his even more complex character. For thirty-six-year-old Kafka, she was a living fire, such as I have never seen. It was to Milena that he revealed his most intimate self and, eventually, entrusted his diaries for safekeeping.

Facsimile of 1943 Edition. Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, ten in all, remain a fresh source of inspiration and insight to the poetic sensibility to this day.

Edited by Abel Debritto, the definitive collection of poems from an influential writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, and acutely observant writing has left an enduring mark on modern culture.

Few writers have so brilliantly and poignantly conjured the desperation and absurdity of ordinary life as Charles Bukowski. Resonant with his powerful, perceptive voice, his visceral, hilarious, and transcendent poetry speaks to us as forcefully today as when it was written. Encompassing a wide range of subjects--from love to death and sex to writing--Bukowski's unvarnished and self-deprecating verse illuminates the deepest and most enduring concerns of the human condition while remaining sharply aware of the day to day.

With his acute eye for the ridiculous and the troubled, Bukowski speaks to the deepest longings and strangest predilections of the human experience. Gloomy yet hopeful, this is tough, unrelenting poetry touched by grace.

This is Essential Bukowski.

Acclaimed writer Charles Bukowski turns his signature eye on the world of felines. A series of essays and poems all about cats, Bukowski's classic funny and frank tone becomes, at times, even endearing as he explores and honors the majestic creatures and our relationship with them. --Bustle

Felines touched a vulnerable spot in the unfathomable soul of Charles Bukowski, the Dirty Old Man of American letters. For the writer, there was something elemental about these inscrutable creatures, whose searing gaze could penetrate deep into our beings. Bukowski considered cats to be forces of nature, elusive emissaries of beauty and love.

Funny and moving, On Cats offers Bukowski's musings on these beloved animals and their toughness and resiliency. Poignant and free of treacle, On Cats is an illuminating portrait of this one-of-a-kind artist and his unique view of the world, witnessed through his relationship with the animals he considered among his most profound teachers.

The letters provide us with an intimate, multilayered understanding of this extraordinary poet's life and mind.

Every now and again I need to get down here, to get into the Diogenes tub, as it were, or the Colmcille beehive hut, or the Mossbawn scullery. At any rate, a hedge surrounds me, the blackbird calls, the soul settles for an hour or two.

In this astute selection from Seamus Heaney's vast correspondence, we are given direct access to the life and poetic development of a literary titan, from his early days in Belfast, through his controversial decision to settle in the Republic, to the gradual broadening of horizons that culminated in the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the years of international eminence that kept him heroically busy until his death.

Christopher Reid draws from both public and private archives to reveal this remarkable story in the poet's own words. Generous, funny, exuberant, confiding, irreverent, empathetic, and deeply thoughtful, The Letters of Seamus Heaney encompasses decades-long relationships with friends and colleagues, as well as an unstinted responsiveness to passing acquaintances.

Heaney's mastery of language is as evident here as it is in any of his writings; listening to his voice we find ourselves in the same room as a man whose presence enriched the world and whose legacy deepens our sense of what truly matters.

LOVE LETTERS OF GREAT MEN (Volume 1) is an anthology of romantic love letters written by leading male historical figures. *** The book plays a key role in the plot of the US movie Sex and the City. *** When Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City movie began reading the book Love Letters of Great Men, millions of women wanted to get their hands on the book. Of course, what could be more romantic than an entire book of love letters, written by men *** The book includes love letters written by Ludwig van Beethoven, Pietro Bembo, Napolean Bonaparte, Rupert Brooke, Robert Browning, Robert Burdette, Lord Byron, Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, John Constable, Cuff Cooper, Oliver Cromwell, Pierre Curie, Alfred de Musset, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lyman Hodge, Count Gabriel Honore de Mirbeau, Victor Hugo, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Henry IV of France, Henry VIII, Franz Liszt, Jack London, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Thomas Otway, Robert Peary, Sir Walter Raleigh, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., John Ruskin, Robert Schumann, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Steele, Alfred de Musset, Dylan Thomas, Count Leo Tolstoy, Vincent Van Gogh, Voltaire, Henry von Kleist, and Woodrow Wilson.

This slim volume of letters from the poet and mystic, Rainer Maria Rilke, to a nineteen-year-old cadet and aspiring poet named Franz Xaver Kappus, has touched millions of readers since it was first published in English in 1934. The translator, Mary Dows Herter Norton--a polymath extraordinaire with expertise in music, literature, and science, and who, along with her husband, William Warder Norton, founded the company that bears his name--played a crucial role in elevating Rilke's reputation in the English-speaking world.

This Norton Centenary Edition commemorates Norton, known as Polly to friends and colleagues, and the 100th anniversary of the publishing company she co-founded. An admiring foreword by Damion Searls--himself a recent translator of Rilke's Letters--celebrates Polly's stylistic achievement, and an afterword by Norton's President, Julia A. Reidhead, honors her commitment to maintaining W. W. Norton & Company's independence.

This handsome new edition of a beloved classic brings Rilke's enduring wisdom about life, love, and art to a new generation, in the translation that first introduced him to the English-speaking world.

Searching for the book of love letters from the Sex in the City movie? This beautiful hard-cover book contains those letters as well as some of the most passionate and romantic poems and love letters ever written.Explore the private longings and passions of the greatest men in history and the women they loved. Find yourself in the middle of torrid love affairs, undying devotion, and scandalous betrayal as you uncover long-lost correspondences between lovers.From great Kings to War Heroes to Philosophers, spanning a period of five centuries, this collection illustrates that the human desires of sex and love were as powerful then as they are now.

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world's greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of the languages and history of Middle-earth as recorded in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, was one of the most prolific letter-writers of the last century. Over the years he wrote a mass of letters--to his publishers, to members of his family, to friends, and to fans of his books--which often reveal the inner workings of his mind, and which record the history of composition of his works and his reaction to subsequent events.

A selection from Tolkien's correspondence, collected and edited by Tolkien's official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, and assisted by Christopher Tolkien, was published in 1981. It presented, in Tolkien's own words, a highly detailed portrait of the man in his many aspects: storyteller, scholar, Catholic, parent, friend, and observer of the world around him.

In this revised and expanded edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, it has been possible to go back to the editors' original typescripts and notes, restoring more than 150 letters that were excised purely to achieve what was then deemed a publishable length, and present the book as originally intended.

Enthusiasts for his writings will find much that is new, for the letters not only include fresh information about Middle-earth, such as Tolkien's own plot summary of the entirety of The Lord of the Rings and a vision for publishing his Tales of the Three Ages, but also many insights into the man and his world. In addition, this new selection will entertain anyone who appreciates the art of letter-writing, of which J.R.R. Tolkien was a master.

A son's poignant letter to his father--from the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial, and one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. - One of the great confessions of literature. --The New York Times Book Review

Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka's probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between father and son as another moment in the larger existential predicament depicted in so much of his work. Probably realizing the futility of her son's gesture, Julie Kafka did not deliver the letter but instead returned it to its author.

A Firecracker Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction
An Electric Literature Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Kirkus Best Book of the Month

From poet Victoria Chang, a collection of literary letters and mementos on the art of remembering across generations.

For Victoria Chang, memory isn't something that blooms, but something that bleeds internally. It is willed, summoned, and dragged to the surface. The remembrances in this collection of letters are founded in the fragments of stories her mother shared reluctantly, and the silences of her father, who first would not and then could not share more. They are whittled and sculpted from an archive of family relics: a marriage license, a letter, a visa petition, a photograph. And, just as often, they are built on the questions that can no longer be answered.

Dear Memory is not a transcription but a process of simultaneously shaping and being shaped, knowing that when a writer dips their pen into history, what emerges is poetry. In carefully crafted collages and missives on trauma, loss, and Americanness, Victoria Chang grasps on to a sense of self that grief threatens to dissipate.

In letters to family, past teachers, and fellow poets, as the imagination, Dear Memory offers a model for what it looks like to find ourselves in our histories.

A fresh perspective on a beloved classic by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's (1875-1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured by readers for nearly a century. Rilke's personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom on further issues including gender, solitude, and romantic love. Barrows and Macy's translation extends this compilation of timeless advice and wisdom to a fresh generation of readers. With a new introduction and commentary, this edition places the letters in the context of today's world and the unique challenges we face when seeking authenticity.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) war ein deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller. Sein Hauptwerk bilden neben drei Romanfragmenten zahlreiche Erz hlungen. Kafkas Werke wurden zum gr eren Teil erst nach seinem Tod und gegen seine letztwillige Verf gung von Max Brod ver ffentlicht, einem engen Freund und Vertrauten, den Kafka als Nachlassverwalter bestimmt hatte. Kafkas Werke z hlen unbestritten zum Kanon der Weltliteratur. Aus dem Buch: Es ist nicht ganz leicht, jetzt nachdem ich diesen schrecklichen aber durchaus nicht bis in seine Tiefe schrecklichen Brief gelesen habe, f r die Freude zu danken, die er mir bei der Ankunft gemacht hat. Es ist Feiertag, gew hnliche Post w re nicht mehr gekommen, ob morgen Freitag etwas von Ihnen k me, war auch zweifelhaft, es war also eine Art bedr ckter Stille, doch gar nicht traurig, soweit es Sie betraf; in Ihrem letzten Briefe waren Sie ja so stark, da ich Ihnen zugesehen habe, so wie ich von meinem Liegestuhl aus Bergsteigern zusehen w rde, wenn ich sie oben im Schnee von hier aus- erkennen k nnte. Und nun kam er doch knapp vor dem Mittagessen, ich konnte ihn mitnehmen, aus der Tasche ziehn, auf den Tisch legen, wieder in die Tasche stecken, wie eben so die H nde mit einem Brief spielen wollen, man sieht ihnen zu und freut sich ber die Kinder.

I want you to be fully present in your own life, a change agent who is not afraid to dare to be who you are. I wonder though, my dear sweet child, how I can mother you when I have not been able to mother myself? How can I give you the tools to survive this brutal world when I have not been able to craft these tools to save myself? How can I stand up for you when my whole life has been spent trying so hard to stand up for myself? I am not perfect. I am flawed. I am pregnant. And in nine months, I will be your mother. And so begins Karsonya Wise Whitehead's first letter to her oldest son. For the past 14 years, she has written letters, poems, notes, and words of inspiration to her two boys, Kofi Elijah and Amir Elisha. She has documented everything from their first steps to their first encounter with racism; from their questions about race to their questions about falling in love. She has borne witness to their tears of joy and pain, their cries of frustration and discovery, and the difficulties that they have encountered growing up black and male. Since this is her love for them poured out onto the page, she chose to publish them exactly as they were written-without any edits or corrections. Letters to My Black Sons traces her (and her husband's) journey to try and raise happy and healthy black boys in a post-racial America.

The painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke first met in 1900 at the Worpswede artists' colony--a focal point of the kind of artistic innovations that were set to transform twentieth-century European culture. Modersohn-Becker and Rilke went on to enjoy an intense friendship over a period that saw both of them having to confront personal and financial challenges as they pursued their artistic vocations. This friendship was cut short by Modersohn-Becker's tragically early death in 1907, but it left in its wake a remarkable series of letters.

As fascinating and evocative when discussing the nature of married life and the difficulty of furnishing one's home as they are when exploring the expressive possibilities of art and poetry, the letters exchanged by Modersohn-Becker and Rilke are a testament to both correspondents' exceptional descriptive gifts and penetrating social intelligence.

Brought together in English for the first time here and introduced by an illuminating essay by the art historian Jill Lloyd, The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence provides a fascinating view of everyday life during an exceptionally fertile and exciting period of cultural production.

Immediately following Britain's declaration of war in 1939, Dion Fortune began a series of regular letters to members of her magical order, the Fraternity of the Inner Light, who were unable to hold meetings due to wartime travel restrictions. With enemy planes rumbling overhead, she organised a series of visualisations to formulate seed ideas in the group mind of the race, archetypal visions to invoke angelic protection and uphold British morale under fire. The war has to be fought and won on the physical plane, she wrote, before physical manifestation can be given to the archetypal ideals. What was sown will grow and bear seed. As the war developed, this was consolidated with further work for the renewal of national and international accord. For the first time the Fraternity's doors were opened to anyone who wanted to join in and learn the previously secret methods of esoteric mind-working. With unswerving optimism she guided her fraternity through the dark days of the London Blitz, continuing her weekly letters even when the bombs came through her own roof. Introduction and commentary by Gareth Knight.

Compelling and intimate, this collection of never-before-seen letters between the celebrated art critic and essayist, John Berger and his son Yves, an artist, is a moving look at their musings on art, memory, life, death, and beyond.

Written between 2015-16, with 53 color images of well-known old masters and contemporary art as well as some of the Bergers' own drawings and watercolors, Over to You is an informal back and forth not unlike the ping-pong games father and son used to play in the barn of their house. It begins when John--who is in a Parisian suburb--sends Yves--who is in Haute Savoie--an envelope of reproductions of art that have moved him. And so they begin to reveal their thoughts looking at a Goya, Watteau, Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Durer, Caravaggio, Manet, and Euan Uglow, among many others. But the art is just a way to summon shared emotions and memories, as well as deepen their understanding of the world and its mysteries.

John at 89 is the more formal teacher, Yves at 39 comes across as the younger, philosophical artist. There are John's thoughts on the use of color, light and space in, say, a Dürer, or a Beckmann to the question of staying fully alive; or Yves noting how much in life exceeds our understanding, the gap between our consciousness and our feeling, between the said and the unsaid. That's the zone where I would like us to meet. Are you coming? He asks his father. I may need other eyes to confirm what is really there. Like your eyes always did. This is an exceptional and moving tribute to a relationship between a father and son, and between two artists, as well as a thought provoking look at questions we all have about work, time, the universe, life and death.

Insightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet's process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s.

One of the most significant European poets of the twentieth century, Paul Celan came from an Eastern European Jewish family and lost his parents to the death camps of World War II. Transplanted to Paris, he produced a body of work that was an ongoing confrontation with that history of loss and with the German language. His poems, anguished and unsleeping, have by now been translated into many languages, becoming a touchstone for poets, writers, and philosophers.

Letters to Gisèle presents the letters Celan wrote to his wife, the French visual artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, over the course of close to twenty years, along with letters to the couple's son, Eric, and letters from Gisèle to Paul. They provide an intimate view of his literary career and troubled life, which was marked by repeated stays in psychiatric clinics. They also provide an unparalleled glimpse into Celan's poetic workshop, including his own word-for-word renderings from German into French of more than a dozen of his poems. These he addressed to Gisèle as an ongoing, informal German lesson. They figure too as messages from the heart. Presented here trilingually, these overlapping versions of Celan's poems open up new dimensions of his famously hermetic poetry, as dazzling as it is dark.

This edition includes some poems in the original German and Celan's own translations of them.

Love Letters of Great Men (Volume 2) is a collection of romantic love poems written by leading male historical figures. *** Volume 1 plays a key role in the plot of the US movie Sex and the City. *** This Volume 2 includes love poems written by Matthew Arnold, Alfred Austin, Samuel Alfred Beadle, William Blake, Christopher Brennan, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Constable, William Cowper, Michael Drayton, George Eliot, Thomas Ford, Stephen Foster, Robert Frost, Thomas Frost, Norman Rowland Gale, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alfred P. Graves, Robert Herrick, Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Jonson, John Keats, Richard Lovelace, Pablo Neruda, Edgar Allen Poe, and William Shakespeare.