The Devonshire family stood at the pinnacle of Georgian society, and the two duchesses who bore that title were prolific correspondents. Drawing on unique access to family papers, Elizabeth’s grandson Vere Foster published these transcriptions of their letters in 1896. With correspondents including the Prince Regent, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the Emperor of Russia, they provide a rare insight into the political and cultural life of the Napoleonic era.

Aristocrat, socialite, actress and wife of Duff Cooper, Churchill's wartime Minister for Information, later Ambassador to France and Viscount Norwich, Diana Cooper was also an inveterate letter-writer. Gathered here, her missives to her only son John Julius Norwich during the Second World War and its aftermath provide a vivid picture of the age and its personalities, and a woman of great intelligence, happiest on her country smallholding but able to cope with the demands on a politician's wife.

TS Eliot entrusted the selection and editing of his letters to his wife Valerie, and in these volumes she presents the correspondence in chronological order, with detailed notes and, at the end of each volume, biographical notes on the correspondents, an index of correspondents and a general index. During the crucial years covered by Volume III, Eliot set a new course for his life and work: he was received into the Church of England and naturalized as a British citizen; and there was a new manner and vision in his poetry, with the first of the Ariel poems, 'Journey of the Magi' in 1927.

While serving as an orderly at a military hospital during the First World War, the artist Stanley Spencer met Desmond Chute, the aesthetic son of a Bristol theatre family, who introduced him to classical literature, including the Confessions of St Augustine. Illustrated with facsimiles and drawings that shed light on Spencer’s artistic development, these 31 letters document the men’s friendship, Spencer’s service in Macedonia and his memories of the village of Cookham.

This first volume of the authoritative edition of Hemingway's letters covers his experiences in the First World War and his arrival in Paris, and offers, at first-hand, insights into his inspirations and creative process.

Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989) was one of the most influential English composers of the 20th century. This biography charts his life and career in his own words. After an introduction by Dickinson, who first met Berkeley in 1956, it presents its subject's account of the musical life of Paris between the wars, his letters to his teacher Nadia Boulanger, and his first-hand memories of fellow composers Ravel, Poulenc, Stravinsky and Britten, as well as Dickinson's interviews with Berkeley's colleagues and friends.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Sir William Hamilton was George III's ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples and his letters to the English court, 1798 to 1799, provide a vivid, day-by-day account of European events.

The philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) would spend up to four hours a day on her correspondence, writing to friends, lovers, students, fans and even casual acquaintances. This selection of her letters, edited and introduced by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe, gives a kaleidoscopic portrait of a life lived to capacity and marked by numerous emotional imbroglios and intense friendships with fellow philosopher Philippa Foot and novelist Brigid Brophy, alongside a long and stable marriage to John Bayley.

After a disastrous marriage, Rosina Bulwer-Lytton (1802-1882) earned her living writing novels. In books such as Cheveley, or The Man of Honour (1839) she vilified her ex-husband, but also successfully drew attention to the plight of abused and separated women generally. Her letters, spanning 1825 to 1881, reveal the intensity of her efforts to expose Bulwer-Lytton's wrong-doings and the difficulty of her life as a single woman separated from her children, and as a writer. No jackets.

One of the funniest writers of the 20th century, PG Wodehouse shied away from a biography. Drawing on unpublished sources, this definitive edition of his letters gives an unrivalled insight into his life and his comic creations. Covering his schooldays, his family's financial troubles, his musical comedy career in New York and the unhappy episode when, interned by the Germans, he was accused of broadcasting Nazi propaganda, it is a book every fan of Jeeves and Wooster will want.

Misunderstood by his peers but hailed by later generations as the father of modern art, Cézanne has long fascinated artists and art lovers, writers, poets and philosophers. This new annotated translation of his letters provides fresh insight into his views on art, politics, literature and friendship. Illustrated with more than 70 images, this book enriches our knowledge of the artist and the man, who emerges as wittier, wiser, more irascible, more philosophical, and above all, more fully human.

Covering the period from 1747 to the eve of the French Revolution, the letters in this volume include both religious and political debate, and the emergence of a theologically distinct Unitarian denomination. No jacket.

Volume II covers the period from the French Revolution to Lindsey’s death in 1808, and reveals his central role in the formation of Unitarianism, and his involvement in movements for political and religious reform. No jacket.

Jennifer Worth (1935–2011) based her hugely successful books, Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End, on her own experiences in the East End in the 1950s. This book contains letters from all sorts of people – from other midwives to lorry drivers – responding to the books and telling their own stories. There are also writings by Jennifer herself, a biographical introduction by family members and a foreword by Miranda Hart.

After Himmler’s suicide in 1945, his letters were believed lost. Then, in 2014, they were discovered in Tel Aviv and authenticated by historians. Edited by his great-niece, they present a chilling glimpse into the mind of a mass murderer. His correspondence with his family presents a man whose life was governed by logic rather than empathy, and who considered his actions in the war to be a necessary and decent duty befitting the ‘great times’ he lived in. Slightly off-mint.

Spanning Thomas’s Welsh childhood, his early career and marriage, this volume charts his growing confidence as a poet as he experiments with ideas, submits work for publication, and corresponds with prominent figures in the literary world, including TS Eliot, Stephen Spender and Edith Sitwell.

The letters in this second volume cover the years of fame, the exhilaration and pain of Thomas’s tempestuous marriage to Caitlin Macnamara, his drinking and his hell-raising. They record the creation of Under Milk Wood, and the slide into alcoholism that claimed his life during a poetry-reading tour in New York.

The artist Stanley Spencer made several attempts to write an autobiography, but completed none of them. His grandson has combined these fragments with his notebooks, diaries and letters to provide a first-hand account of his life. Illustrated with Spencer’s paintings and drawings alongside period photographs, the resulting narrative records the development of his art and personality from his childhood in Cookham through his training at the Slade to his experiences in the First World War.

In chapters devoted to each monarch – Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I – this is a narrative account of the Tudor period, told through 42 letters and documents in the British Library’s collections. From Henry VII and Elizabeth of York’s autograph inscriptions in a prayer book, to a letter from Elizabeth I to James VI of Scotland in 1603, each item is illustrated in colour, fully transcribed and accompanied by a commentary setting it in historical context.

Letters written as editor of the school magazine, love letters, begging letters, letters to literary editors, fellow poets and friends: the collected letters of Dylan Thomas trace his life from the age of 16 to shortly before his death in New York in 1953, at the age of 39. Outspoken, and often indiscreet, they form the poet’s own narrative, telling of his love of Caitlin, his opinions on poets and poetry, and a life famously marred by drink and debt. Second edition. The two titles included in this set are: Dylan Thomas The Collected Letters Volume I: 1931–1939 (Read more...)Dylan Thomas The Collected Letters Volumes II: 1939–1953 (Read more...)

During the last decade of his life Leoš Janácek sent hundreds of passionate letters to Kamila Stösslová, a married woman half his age. Selections from their correspondence are translated in this volume, with linking commentary, photographs and a decoding of the lovers’ erotic references. Their words reveal how much this relationship inspired the composer’s final, greatest works – including the String Quartet ‘Intimate Letters’ – and shed valuable light on his personality.

Mme Marie Williams, the wife of an American dentist, lived in the apartment directly above Marcel Proust’s in 102 Boulevard Haussmann and, despite their proximity, Proust and Mme Williams wrote to one another. Proust’s were often about the noise, yet always exquisitely expressed and often accompanied by flowers; the 23 letters are presented here with a foreword by Jean-Yves Tadié. Translated, with an afterword, by Lydia Davis.

Off-mint.

Letters of Note was an unexpected publishing sensation - a crowd-funded anthology of letters that became an international bestseller. This follow-up delivers the same mix of the tragic, the comic, the heartfelt and the historically significant. Illustrated with colour facsimiles of the original letters, it includes Richard Burton's farewell note to Elizabeth Taylor on their divorce, David Bowie's touching reply to his first American fan letter, and the final missive from a doomed Japan Airlines flight.

While volunteering as a nurse for the Union Army, Louisa May Alcott recorded her experiences in letters home, giving a raw, honest depiction of the realities of battlefield medicine and contemporary warfare.

Drawing on the Royal Archives and the archives at Glamis Castle, the Queen Mother's official biographer presents a selection of letters written by Elizabeth to her family, friends and a circle of acquaintance that included Winston Churchill, Benjamin Britten and Ted Hughes. Covering all phases of her life – as Elizabeth Bowes- Lyon, Duchess of York, Queen Consort and Queen Mother – the letters illuminate a personality described by her grandson, Prince Charles, as 'wise, loving, with an utterly irresistible mischievousness of spirit'. Off-mint.

In 1860 Henry Wemyss Feilden (1838–1921) resigned his British army commission and travelled to America, where he joined the Confederate forces in Charleston; until the end of the Civil War he served as a staff officer, travelling widely and marrying a local woman. Feilden’s letters, an important source for our knowledge of military matters and civilian life in the southern states, appear here with annotations and reminiscences which he added in his final years.

Drawing on the Royal Archives and the archives at Glamis Castle, the Queen Mother's official biographer presents a selection of letters written by Elizabeth to her family, friends and a circle of acquaintance that included Winston Churchill, Benjamin Britten and Ted Hughes. Covering all phases of her life - as Elizabeth Bowes- Lyon, Duchess of York, Queen Consort and Queen Mother - the letters illuminate a personality described by her grandson, Prince Charles, as 'wise, loving, with an utterly irresistible mischievousness of spirit'. Off-mint.