Showing titles in Letters & Correspondence

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC-AD 65), also known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist from the Silver Age of Latin literature. This edition of Seneca's Epistles includes all 124 of the letters in a single volume, with explanatory notes, an appendix, and an index of the names occurring in the text. The letters were written by Seneca during his retirement and sent to his friend Lucilius Junior, a procurator of Sicily.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year All royalties from sales of this book go to The Big Issue If you could write a letter to your younger self, what would it say? Over 10 years ago, The Big Issue began to ask some of the best-known, most interesting and most successful figures in entertainment...

One day Ian Marchant decided, as all men of a certain age must, to have a dig around his family history. Surprisingly quickly, a web search informed him that his seven-times-great great-grandfather, Thomas Marchant, had left a detailed diary from 1714 to 1728. Diarist Thom – who liked a drink and a game of cards – feels recognisably Marchant to Ian. With immersive detail we learn about Thom’s family farm and fishponds; about dung, horses and mud; about beer, the wife’s nights out, his own job troubles and their shared worries for their children.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is perhaps the most well known collection of reminiscences. He maintained it, in secrecy, from 1660, the year of the Restoration, until 1669 when fear of blindness prevented his daily labours. Though it covers less than a decade, it offers a lively and detailed insight into a period and a personality, for he noted events in both public and private life. Famous passages include descriptions of The Plague and the Great Fire of London.

George Gordon Byron was born in 1788, the son of the profligate 'Mad Jack' Byron, and succeeded to the title in 1798 moving to the family seat of Newstead Abbey. He attended Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he proved to be a poor scholar, preferring boxing, the low life and poetry, publishing his first volume of poems in 1806. In 1809, at 21, he embarked on a grand tour of Europe and on his return to England he married the humourless Annabella Milbanke, who gave birth to his daughter Augusta in 1815.

Every day, President Obama received 10,000 letters from ordinary American citizens. Every night, he read 10 of them before going to bed. This is the story of how they shaped his presidency. Together they reveal the diary of a nation. They wrote to Obama out of gratitude and desperation, in their darkest times of need, with anger, fear and respect. To Obama is an intimate look at one man's relationship with the American people, and at a time when empathy intersected with politics in the White House.

In 1969, John Julius Norwich, the legendary popular historian, gathered together the favourite things he'd come across in the last 365 days into one short charming pamphlet. Initially just a treat for his friends, it rapidly turned into a huge word-of-mouth success. And soon the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest 'Christmas Cracker' became as essential a part of the English Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. Norwich had a brilliant eye for a story and telling detail, and his Crackers are full of jokes, warmth and wit. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.

These letters, in the form of a frank and amusing diary, were written by a private in Wellington's army who fought throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Private Wheeler's record covers the Peninsular Campaign, keeping order during the coronation of Louis XVIII (whom he called 'an old bloated poltroon') and his later posting to Corfu.

Having saved virtually every letter her father wrote to her between the years 1938, when she was 11 years old, and 1967, Miriam Marx' letters from her famous father Groucho show an extraordinary father-daughter relationship.

In this moving collection, Shaun Usher gathers together some of the most powerful letters about love ever written. Whether inspired by love’s first blush or the recriminations at its ending, the regrets of unrequited feelings and the joys of passions known, Letters of Note: Love is essential...

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled Black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

The extant letters of Pliny, written between AD 97 and 112, give us a unique insight into Imperial Rome under the early Antonine emperors. Organised into 10 books, the letters reflect a wide range of topics, mirroring Pliny’s own public and private interests. Among many other subjects, the letters also include an eye-witness account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, with the final book containing the exchange of letters between the writer (whose career culminated as Governor of Bithynia) and the emperor Trajan.

Bruce Lee: Letters of the Dragon is a fascinating glimpse of the private Bruce Lee behind the public image—a man with the patience and concern to dedicate as much effort to crafting a thoughtful personal answer to the letter of a young fan as to those from his old friends and associates; an extremely active man never too busy to make time for an old family friend in need of simple companionship; a man who never wrote without careful thought, and never thought from the head alone, but always from the head and heart together.

In Letters of Note: Music, Shaun Usher brings together a riveting collection of letters by and about some of the musicians and music that enrich our lives. Wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating, it will delight music lovers of all stripes. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to...

In Letters of Note: Dogs, Shaun Usher brings together a delightful collection of correspondence about our canine friends, featuring affectionate accounts of pups’ playful misdemeanours, heartfelt tributes to loyal fidos and shared tales of remarkable hounds. Includes letters by: Clara Bow, Bob...

Florence, 1557. Le peintre Pontormo est retrouvé assassiné au pied des fresques auxquelles il travaillait depuis onze ans. Un tableau a été maquillé. Un crime de lèse-majesté a été commis. Vasari, l’homme à tout faire du duc de Florence, est chargé de l’enquête. Pour l’assister à distance, il se tourne vers le vieux Michel-Ange exilé à Rome.

Le 19 mars 1944, Albert Camus et Maria Casarès se croisent chez Michel Leiris. L'ancienne élève du Conservatoire, originaire de La Corogne et fille d'un républicain espagnol en exil, n'a que vingt et un ans. L'écrivain vit alors seul à Paris, la guerre l'ayant tenu éloigné de son épouse Francine, enseignante à Oran. Sensible au talent de l'actrice, Albert Camus lui confie le rôle de Martha pour la création du Malentendu en juin 1944. Et durant la nuit du Débarquement, Albert Camus et Maria Casarès deviennent amants.

In Letters of Note: Art, Shaun Usher celebrates extraordinary correspondence about art, from missives on the agony of being overlooked, the ecstasy of producing work that excites, to surprising sources of inspiration and rousing manifestos. A star-studded cast of readers brings the letters to...

A raw and tenderly funny look at the human-cat relationship, from one of our most treasured and transgressive writers. “The cat is the beautiful devil.” Felines touched a vulnerable spot in Charles Bukowski’s crusty soul. For the writer, there was something majestic and elemental about...