Robert Hart’s forty-five-year administration of China’s customs service was a unique achievement. In these letters Hart speaks to us directly from a time long past in China, but a time that may seem only yesterday to a Western reader. The result is a primary source for the history of modern China and the era of foreign privilege there.

Bearing sole responsibility for the Chinese Maritime Customs as its Inspector General, Hart built up an international staff of thousands, facilitated foreign trade, gave the late-Ch’ing court its principal new revenues, and fostered China’s modernity in administration, schools, naval development, postal service, and many other lines. Behind the scenes Hart was also a diplomat who settled the Sino–French war, changed Macao’s status, got boundaries delimited with Burma and India, and mitigated the disasters of imperialism. His career at Peking, coinciding with that of the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi, represented the constructive side of the unequal treaty system and Victorian Britain’s informal empire in East Asia.

The publication of the great I. G.’s weekly or fortnightly letters to his confidant and London commissioner, James Duncan Campbell, gives us an intimate, inside view of Hart’s problems and methods. He appraises his employers in China’s foreign office, the Tsungli Yamen, and comments pithily on the complex flow of events and personalities. He quotes the Confucian Classic but, even more, the Latin poets. His personal life is revealed—standing long hours at his writing desk, finding solace in the violin, keeping his own counsel, constantly isolated by his responsibilities. Having no confidant in Peking, he explains himself to his loyal agent in London.

The Hart–Campbell letters, after five years’ editing and annotation and with an informed introduction by Hart’s final successor as foreign I. G., L. K. Little, thus take their place as one of the great historical treasures that bring a vanished era back to life.

A personal look into the mind of one of Europe’s first and foremost women of letters.
 
At times poetic but not a poem, prosaic but not an essay, a letter is often pure writing for writing’s sake. Such is the case for Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, née Levin, the illustrious German-Jewish Berlin literary salon hostess from the early nineteenth century. She penned over ten thousand letters to more than three hundred recipients, including princes, philosophers, poets, family members, and the family cook. Written with a wink at posterity, collected and first published after her passing by her husband, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, these letters constitute a singular contribution to German literature.
 
Varied in subject—from family affairs to linguistic, literary, and pressing social concerns—the poignant lyricism of her letters is all the more remarkable when we take into account that High German was not her first language; she grew up speaking, reading, and writing primarily Yiddish. Her shaky social status as a woman and a member of a precarious minority, combined with an astounding lucidity and a rare capacity to put her thoughts into words, made her a force to be reckoned with in her lifetime and thereafter as one of Germany’s preeminent women of letters. As we see in I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me, her voice is as fresh and original as that of any of the recognized poets and thinkers of her day. As Rahel herself put it: “[O]ur language is our lived life; I invented mine for my own purposes, I was less able than many others to make use of preconceived turns of phrase, which is why mine are often clumsy, and in all respects faulty, but always true.”
 
Compiled and translated by Peter Wortsman, this rewarding volume affords English-speaking readers the first privileged peek at the mindset of one of Europe’s first and foremost women of letters.
 

For most Norwegians in the nineteenth century, America was a remote and exotic place until the first immigrants began to write home. Their letters were among the most valuable, accessible, and reliable sources of information about the new world and the journey to it. For many immigrants, writing letters home was their most cherished opportunity to communicate their thoughts and feelings in their native language. Through vivid translations of letters written to family and friends between 1870 and 1945, In Their Own Words traces the stories of nine Norwegian immigrants: farmer, fisherman, gold miner, politician, unmarried mother, housewife, businessman, railroad worker, contractor. Their common bond was the experience of immigration and acculturation, but their individual experiences were manifested in a wide variety of forms. Solveig Zempel has thoughtfully selected and translated letters rich in personal description and observation to present each writer's subjective view of historical events. Often focusing on the minutiae of daily life and the feelings of the individual immigrant, the letters form a complex, intimate, and colorful mosaic of the immigrant world. "Zempel has done us a service by choosing letters that are, first of all, of interest in themselves and, second, that must make us think again about the broad brush with which we habitually paint immigrant life." Scandinavian Studies "Zempel's letters cover a wide range of experiences from 1870 to 1945. In letters to family friends, nine immigrants ranging from a teacher to a railroad worker, an unmarried mother to a politician, recounted their experiences of immigration and community-building during a period of mass migration to this country. The letter writers corresponded from various regions, from both cities and farms about their successes in America; about such mundane matters as the weather, neighbors, and food; about their desire for Ibsen's new book or a visit home for Christmas. Such letters provide invaluable documentation of everyday life." The Annals of Iowa "Zempel has performed a valuable service for students of American immigration history. This is an eminently readable, entertaining and excellent book. Zempel uses the letters of nine Norwegian immigrants found in archives from St. Paul, Minnesota to Stavanger, Bergen, and Kristiansand, Norway, to superbly depict not only their singular experiences of living, working, marrying, and raising a family but to also convey their sadness, loneliness, joy and hope." Journal of the West "The variety and scope of the letters from America to Norway make for fascinating reading; they also provide informative insights into the minds and thoughts of new settlers on American soil. The reader will come away from this volume with a deepened awareness of the importance of 'America letters' in understanding the American experience. Readers will feel close to these writers, engaged as they are in private communications with family members and friends they left behind in the homeland." MELUS "The variety of occupations, backgrounds, and experiences described in the letters make the book a valuable contribution to the understanding of the Norwegian immigrant experience. The thread that weaves all of the letters together is the reaction of each immigrant to his or her new environment." Journal of American Ethnic History "These carefully selected letters are bountiful, alive, and touch upon historical events as well as the humdrum experiences of daily life. The insight gained from the accounts reveals valuable information about the new world." School Library Journal Solveig Zempel is chair of the Norwegian Department at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota

The books of Margaret Laurence and Gabrielle Roy are among the most beloved in Canadian literature. In 1976, when both were at the height of their careers, they began a seven-year written correspondence. Laurence had just published her widely acclaimed The Diviners, for which she won her second Governor-General’s Award, and Roy had returned to the centre of the literary stage with a series of books that many critics now consider her richest and most mature works. Although both women had been born and raised in Manitoba — Laurence in Neepawa and Roy in St. Boniface — they met only once, in 1978 at a conference in Calgary. As these letters reveal, their prairie background created a common understanding of place and culture that bridged the differences of age and language. Here Laurence and Roy discuss everything from their own and each other’s writing, to Canadian politics, housekeeping, publishing, and their love of nature. With a thoughtful introduction by Paul G. Socken, these lovely and intimate letters record the moving, affectionate friendship between two remarkable women.

The first comprehensive intellectual history of alphabet studies.

Inventing the Alphabet provides the first account of two-and-a-half millennia of scholarship on the alphabet. Drawing on decades of research, Johanna Drucker dives into sometimes obscure and esoteric references, dispelling myths and identifying a pantheon of little-known scholars who contributed to our modern understandings of the alphabet, one of the most important inventions in human history.

Beginning with Biblical tales and accounts from antiquity, Drucker traces the transmission of ancient Greek thinking about the alphabet’s origin and debates about how Moses learned to read. The book moves through the centuries, finishing with contemporary concepts of the letters in alpha-numeric code used for global communication systems. Along the way, we learn about magical and angelic alphabets, antique inscriptions on coins and artifacts, and the comparative tables of scripts that continue through the development of modern fields of archaeology and paleography.

This is the first book to chronicle the story of the intellectual history through which the alphabet has been “invented” as an object of scholarship.