Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence

Seeing self-possession as the key to an existence lived 'in accordance with nature', the Stoic philosophy called for the restraint of animal instincts and the importance of upright ethical ideals and virtuous living....

The 38 letters written by Rockefeller to his son imparting his perspectives, ideology, and wisdom to his son....

This letter is the closest that Kafka came to setting down his autobiography. He was driven to write it by his father's opposition to his engagement with Julie Wohryzek. The marriage did not take place; the letter was not delivered....

At the start of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself....

This edition of Seneca's Epistles includes all 124 of the letters in a single volume, with explanatory notes, an appendix, and an index of the names occurring in the text....

Join the galactic conversation on the biggest issues in the universe....

UG Krishnamurti has been called the ‘anti-guru’, the ‘raging sage’ and the ‘thinker who shuns thought’. UG does not give lectures, has no organizations, does not write books, holds no gatherings and peddles no mantras. Yet he is the most talked-about thinker in India....

John le Carré was one of the greatest novelists of his generation but also had an extraordinary life, from his childhood with a con man father to his inimitable career as a writer....

The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon is a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the closing years of the 10th century....

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875-1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom....

Fans of memoirs at large will delight in the intimate experience of beloved actor Alan Rickman detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is 'anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid'....

As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter to the Mother Goddess, whom he addressed as jagat janani, every night before going to bed. The topics were varied: there were seething sorrows, fleeting joys, lingering memories....

This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and unusual letters updated with 14 riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher....

A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s....

Shaun Usher gathers together some of the most powerful letters about love ever written....

Voyage of the Beagle foreshadows Darwin's world-changing On The Origin of Species (also a CSA Word audiobook read by Richard Dawkins), in its constant intellectual quest....

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context....

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature....

A meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness. In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature....

In Letters of Note: Cats, Shaun Usher collects together the most engaging missives that celebrate, eulogise, rail against and analyse the idiosyncratic ways of our feline companions....

Over 10 years ago, The Big Issue began to ask some of the best known, most interesting and most successful figures in entertainment, politics, food, sport and business to give advice, offer hope and share a few jokes with their younger selves....

Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then..."

Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife, Friedel. Last Stop Auschwitz is an extraordinary account of life as a prisoner, a near real-time record of the daily struggle to survive but also of flickering moments of joy....

This collection of letters forms a fascinating day-by-day account of Steinbeck's writing of East of Eden, his longest and most ambitious novel....

In Letters of Note: Art, Shaun Usher celebrates extraordinary correspondence about art, from missives on the agony of being overlooked, the ecstasy of producing work that excites, to surprising sources of inspiration and rousing manifestos....