Lou Andreas Salomé Libri

The first English translation of a presciently modern portrayal of emerging feminist sensibilities in a nineteenth-century family, by one of Germany's leading pre-First World War writers.

To Nietzsche, she was the "the smartest person I ever knew," the perfect heir to his philosophy, "the best and most fruitful ploughland" for his ideas. To Rainer Maria Rilke, she was an "extraordinary woman" without whose influence "my whole development would not have been able to take the paths that have led to many things." And to Sigmund Freud, she was "an understander par excellence," the second woman in his life (after his beloved sister-in-law Minna Bernays) and the only woman among his colleagues with whom he would maintain a long and continuous correspondence. Although Lou Andreas-Salome is best known today for her relationships with these three men of genius, she was well known in her own right during the early years of this century as both a writer and a psychoanalyst. She commuted between artistic circles in Berlin, Vienna, Paris and St. Petersburg during the formative years of modern European culture, and her writings -- on religion, psychoanalysis and women -- reflected many of the themes that would preoccupy thinkers throughout this century. Her memoirs, "Looking Back," published posthumously in German in 1951, are now available for the first time in English.

Never before available in English, You Alone Are Real to Me documents the relationship between Andreas-Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke that spanned almost 30 years. Andreas-Salomé gives an intimate account of Rilke’s poetic development from the early romantic poems to the sculpted new poems and the final breakthrough of the Elegies. From their romantic beginnings to the later twists and turns of their separate lives, Rilke appealed to Andreas-Salomé during times of crisis in his writing as well as in the intimate matters of his life. Andreas-Salomé captures both the summit and the abyss of Rilke’s creative struggle. The memoir offers a stunning portrait of Rilke, as we in the English-speaking world have never really seen him. Richly illustrated with photos, this book is an indispensable work on the author of The Duino Elegies, as well as a rich resource for the growing interest in Andreas-Salomé. Angela von der Lippe is a senior editor at W.W. Norton and holds a doctorate in German Literature and Language from Brown University.

Psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salome may seem to be a figure remote from us, one belonging to a pre-1914 Europe, but in many ways, she is our contemporary

Drei Breife an einen Knaben (Three Letters to a Young Boy) and Der Teufel und Seine Grossmutter (The Devil & His Grandmother) are texts that explore sexuality across the lifespan with some unexpected twists and turns. The Devil & His Grandmother treats the collision of sexuality and religion, and therefore religious education indirectly. The Three Letters was originally authored in 1912 with two letters addressed to Helene Klinenberg's son and a third added in 1913. The Three Letters were edited, appended and finally published in 1917 by Kurt Wolff's Verlag in Leipzig. --

Presents critical essays written by a woman contemporary of Ibsen's, detailing her thoughts on the depiction of women in Ibsen's plays and women's confined roles in society at the end of the nineteenth century