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  • Published: 6 June 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241620038
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $30.00

Letters to a Young Poet




Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.

Over the course of six years, Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, 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 volume also contains the 'Letter from a Young Worker', a striking polemic against Christianity written too in letter form.

  • Published: 6 June 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241620038
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $30.00

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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