From the age of 16 the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was a passionate collector of literary and historical autograph manuscripts, and his collection of unique pieces included poems by Rilke and Baudelaire, drafts by Robespierre, Darwin and Dostoevsky and lecture notes by Nietzsche. The collection was donated to the British Library by Zweig’s heirs in 1986, and is catalogued in this volume with full descriptions, commentary and 74 reproductions of manuscript pages.