This is the first complete translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours (Das Stunden-Buch) in more than forty years. This bilingual edition provides English-speaking readers with access to a critical work in the development of the most significant figure in twentieth-century German poetry. Kidder's delicately nuanced translation preserves Rilke's uncomplicated and melodic flow, his rhythm, and, where possible, his rhyme while remaining true to content.

Rilke penned The Book of Hours between 1899 and 1903 in three parts. Readers and experts alike consider the collection among Rilke's most important and enduring works.

RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875–1926) is the author of Duino Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus, and the novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Bilingual editions of Rilke's Duino Elegies and New Poems are published by Northwestern University Press.

ANNEMARIE S. KIDDER is associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan and has translated works by Luise Schottroff, Raimon Panikkar, and Jürgen Becker.