Product Review

Like Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, this remarkable little book of wisdom and advice refreshes the mind and renews the spirit. Written in 1930 and published in Paris by the Hours Press in a limited edition of only two hundred, these letters were addressed to an eight-year-old girl, the "thoughtful and sensible" child of Nancy Nicholson and Robert Graves. But they were also meant for adults who might have such a child in their spirit. In simple, luminous language, Laura Riding explains the difference between learning and knowing; the value of thinking, of doing, and of not-showing-off; and how it is good to live straight, avoiding the hypocrisies and pretensions of "the muddle." Here is a literary treasure to be shared between generations. For many readers, it will also serve as an invaluable key to the thought of this astonishingly original writer.