A letter to Allen Dulles.[1] My dear Allen, My review has now gone to the Sunday Telegraph and I hope it won’t displease you. I enjoyed the book very much, though I was puzzled by the way that you don’t seem to have been posted on English cases with perfect accuracy. Houghton[2] did not attract [...]

A letter to Franz Liszt. DEAR FRIEND LISZT, From all I hear you have recently added to the unequalled successes of your former life and artistic activity a new one, which probably is not inferior to the foremost of its predecessors, and in many respects perhaps surpasses them all. Do you suppose I cannot judge [...]

This evening I was looking for a notebook in which to keep a record of dreams and I found this diary, this sentimental journal of whatever you (Gentle Reader in the Bodleian) like to call it. Perhaps it is hardly a diary, for I keep a bald record of everyday happenings in a neat little [...]

A letter to A. E. Hotchner. Dear Ed: It was pretty bad timeing wasn’t it, kid? No sense to cry over spilt shit. Let’s do something practical. Have you any money for comeing events and while you are making plans? Let me know anything I can do. Wouldn’t you think they might have realized that [...]

[Woolf has begun, the day before, an account of her recent reading, and at the beginning of this entry is describing Sir Walter Scott’s The Tale of Old Mortality.] To continue—certainly the later chapters are bare and grey, ground out too palpably; authorities, I daresay, interfering with the original flow. And Morton is a prig; [...]

1914: Wasted day. My only joy was the hope that last night has given me of sleeping better. I was going home in my usual fashion in the evening after work, when, as though I had been watched for, they excitedly waved to me from all three windows of the Genzmer house to come up. [...]

A letter to John F. Kennedy. Dear Jack: I was not particularly upset about your not getting back on time as I feel you are doing such a good job up there, but some little thing like that might put you off on the wrong foot and then again it may give people the idea [...]

Toward 7:00 PM Frau Kästner lived in the cellar of the side wing in the back court; behind the courtyard one can see a curious little old church. A dark young girl opened the door, she read the letter with complete resignation. Yes, it was all the same to her now, only she didn’t want [...]

Odysseus in Polyphemus’s cave.—Yesterday afternoon Neumark had me called over; I had to help him deliver letters this morning. I was quite unsuspecting. In the evening Berger was up here with me for a while, I told him, and he was annoyed and said, it’ll be for digging trenches. I still did not grasp the [...]

Thursday after Ash Wednesday Tomorrow St. Stephen of Granmont, to whom I have devotion, is concealed under the liturgy of Lent. Lent does me good. When I fast, I haven’t the energy to get dissipated. And my mind seems to have no inclination to grasp disputed points in theology. There is much less turbulence in [...]

A letter to Clement Greenberg. Nick Chiaromonte has told me of your attack on Lionel Abel. He has seen Lionel and says his face is bruised from several blows. As you know, I rang you up this morning to make sure that it was you who began the fight. You told me you had hit [...]

A letter to Henri Matisse. My dear Matisse, I have some ver sad news for you. After a month’s illness, her lungs being affected along with the digestive tract, my poor Marthe died of cardiac arrest.[1] Six days ago we buried her in Le Cannet cemetery. You can imagine my grief and solitude, filled with [...]

A letter to Hannah Arendt. Dear Hannah: As soon as I got home I cut out of Poetry the poems I promised to send, put them in a safe place, and after a couple of days started to send them. It was really a safe place; I never found them until yesterday—they were in an [...]

A letter to Gertrud and Karl Jaspers. Dearest Friends— I’m still reading proofs—Eichmann without end. In between I entertain myself with Piper, who seems to want to go ahead now but is still afraid of his own courage. I’ve already had offers from Rowohlt and Kiepenheuer—don’t like either one. But I’ve sent Piper a friendly [...]

Tonight they are playing Hernani, which I have been waiting for for a long time. I wore my beautiful blue dress, and Mama and Dina and my aunt also had pretty dresses. We had to wait in line, as there was a crowd; there were torches in the street and guards and policemen, and finally [...]

A letter to Roger Fry. My dear, You will be seeing Clive today and hearing all our doings and so perhaps you won’t want a letter from me. All the same you’re going to have one just to pay you out for all the horrid things you said to me in your letter this morning. [...]

From a letter to the author’s parents. Good news would fly to you if I did not always have to fear censure. I know how doubtful is the joy of tidings when the news itself is not joyful. It is unwise of me to break the silence. Now I will stay in Paris for good, [...]

Koninski was a philosopher of pain, the pain of humans and of animals. A professed Catholic, he struggled with himself and tried to be a Catholic, but there was still a great deal of his father in him; his father was a Protestant and an agnostic who used to say that if someone did create [...]

A letter to A. E. Trick. Dear Bert, This is only the second letter I’ve written since I came to this very Big City, and it should have been at least the tenth; I’ve had such a lot that I wanted to say to you, and, now that I do sit down and attempt to [...]

A letter to Vernon Watkins. Dear Vernon, This is just to tell you that Caitlin & I have a son aged 48 hours. Its name is Llewelyn Thomas. It is red-faced, very angry, & blue-eyed. Bit blue, bit green. It does not like the world. Caitlin is well, & beautiful. I’m sorry Yeats is dead.[1] [...]

It has been a hard day, at least in its beginning, this February 1. It began as usual with the mail. Nadine was able to get through the ice, thank goodness, and when she brought the mail, there was a letter from Ann Crooker’s sister to tell me that Ann had died on January 16 [...]

A letter to William Dean Howells. 3, Bolton Street, Piccadilly. W. My dear Howells — Your letter of Jan. 19th, & its inclosure (your review of my Hawthorne) came to me last night, & I must thank you without delay for each of them.[1] I am very happy to hear the effects of the fire [...]

The last few days have been spent in crazy business about my visa. Meanwhile I have spent a lot of time reading to prepare my lectures for Cincinnati. I am very excited about my general theme, that it is the tendency of modern literature to be visionary. I am so excited about this idea that [...]

A letter to Daniel Halpern, Antaeus, New York. I sent off the galleys yesterday; it took from four ten to six fifteen. First they claimed it was forbidden to send papers in an envelope; they had to be rolled and wrapped in paper, and it had to be special paper. We set out in search [...]

A letter to John Joseph Stockdale. Addressed: Mr. J. J. Stockdale, bookseller, / 41, Pall Mall, London. Oxford, 28th of January, 1811. Sir, On my arrival at Oxford my friend Mr. Hogg communicated to me the letters which passed in consequence of your misrepresentations of his character, the abuse of that confidence which he invariable [...]

A letter to Samuel Steward. Sam dear– News! There really isnt any. Winter is winter and there is no use going into that—most particularly not the kind we’ve been indulging in these last few days—minus fifteen centigrade outdoors—plus twelve in the salon—but it is supposed to break today and the first airplane has flown over [...]

The peculiarity of a work of genius is the absence of the speaker from his speech– He is but the medium. You behold a perfect work, but you do not behold the worker. I read its page but it is as free from any man that can be–remembered as an impassable desert. I think that [...]

A letter to Hester Thrale. Madam: The inequalities of human life have always employed the meditation of deep thinkers, and I cannot forebear to reflect on the difference between your condition and my own. You live upon Mock turtle, and stewed Rumps of Beef. I dined yesterday upon crumpets. You sit with parish officers, caressing [...]

A letter from Mayakovsky to Brik, Moscow, before 31 January 1923. Sweet, dear Lilyok, Sending you a letter I knew today that you would not reply. Osya sees I wasn’t writing. Even this letter is lying in a drawer. You won’t reply because I’m already replaced, because I no longer exist for you, because you [...]

I saw Glagoleva again on Thursday. She greeted me with the words: ‘You’re just the person I’m looking for!’ What it is about, and it seems to be urgent, is that she has a dancing partner of some kind with whom she wants to perform an Assyrian dance in Assyrian costume, and there is accordingly [...]

A letter to James Laughlin. Dear Jim: It isn’t time for congratulations just yet, I suspect there’ll be a catch somewhere before they crown me but thanks anyway. I’m sorry you felt the pang you did at sacrificing the collected poems but at the same time I’m proud to be its object. There’s plenty of [...]

From a letter to Anaïs Nin. Café nights! Room too cold, fingers freeze. Halfway thru the last insertion for Tropic of Cancer. Got drunk on it. Tonight, reading [Samuel] Putnam’s Rabelais, I see so many points of correspondence—amazing. His chapter on François’ first visit to Paris interests me terribly—the song of the streets again. And [...]

A letter to Francis Austen. My dearest Frank I have melancholy news to relate, & sincerely feel for your feelings under the shock of it.—I wish I could better prepare you for it. But having said so much, your mind will already forestall the sort of event which I have to communicate.—Our dear Father has [...]

A letter to Pavel Voinovich Naschokin. Between January 10 and 20, 1836. From Petersburg to Moscow. My dear Pavel Voinovich, I have not written you because I am at odds with the Moscow post.[1] I have heard that you were planning to come see me at my village. I rejoice that you didn’t come, because [...]

How strange and peculiar nervous diseases are! Vaucorbeil, the composer, has a horror of velvet, and suffers absolute agony whenever he is invited somewhere for the first time, wondering whether the dining-room chairs are covered in velvet. * * * After an interval of many months, I am taking up the pen fallen from my [...]

A letter to Harold Ober. Dear Harold: About the piece in the mail today, ON FEAR, the next What Happened to the American Dream chapter. Let Harper’s see it first, then the Atlantic, if they dont want it, let the Post see it.[1] I’d rather stay away from slick mags, since on this subject, segregation, [...]