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  • Published: 28 January 2016
  • ISBN: 9780141983448
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Narrator: Dan Stevens

Letters to a Young Poet




Rilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now in Penguin Classics

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, read by Max Deacon and Dan Stevens.

At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. This book also contains the 'Letter from a Young Worker', a striking polemic against Christianity written in letter-form, near the end of Rilke's life. In Lewis Hyde's introduction, he explores the context in which these letters were written and how the author embraced his isolation as a creative force. Charlie Louth's afterword discusses the similarities and contrasts of the two works, and Rilke's religious and sexual wordplay. This edition also contains a chronology, notes, and suggested further reading.

  • Published: 28 January 2016
  • ISBN: 9780141983448
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Narrator: Dan Stevens

Other books in the series

The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
When You Are Old
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
Venus in Furs
Man and Superman
Military Dispatches
The Prelude

About the author

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in 1875 in Prague. He studied literature, art history and philosophy in both Munich and Prague, and is often considered one of the German language's greatest 20th century poets. His two most famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He died in 1926 in Switzerland after suffering from undiagnosed, chronic acute leukemia during his final months.

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Praise for Letters to a Young Poet

...I cannot think of a better book to put into the hands of any young would-be poet, as an inspirational guide to poetry and to surviving as a poet in a hostile world.

Harry Fainlight, The Times