365 books match the query 'Correspondence' and 20 start with d

cover of Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa: Anthropology, Literature, and History

Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa

Anthropology, Literature, and History

E. Paul Durrenberger

University Press of Colorado, 2021

In The Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa E. Paul Durrenberger recounts the transformation of Iowa’s family farms into today’s agricultural industry through the lens of the lives and writings of Iowa novelist Paul Corey and poet Ruth Lechlitner. This anthropological biography analyzes Corey’s fiction, Lechlitner’s poetry, and their professional and personal correspondence to offer a new perspective on an era (1925–1947) that saw the collapse and remaking of capitalism in the United States, the rise of communism in the Soviet Union, the rise and defeat of fascism around the world, and the creation of a continuous warfare state in America.
 
Durrenberger tells the story that Corey aimed to record and preserve of the industrialization of Iowa’s agriculture and the death of its family farms. He analyzes Corey’s regionalist focus on Iowa farming and regionalism’s contemporaneous association in Europe with rising fascism. He explores Corey’s adoption of naturalism, evident in his resistance to heroes and villains, to plot structure and resolution, and to moral judgment, as well as his ethnographic tendency to focus on groups rather than individuals.
 
An unusual and wide-ranging study, The Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa offers important insight into the relationships among fiction, individual lives, and anthropological practice, as well as into a pivotal period in American history.
 
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cover of Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959

Dear Bess

The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959

Edited by Robert H. Ferrell

University of Missouri Press, 1998

 

Once again available is the critically acclaimed Dear Bess, a collection of more than 600 letters that Harry S. Truman wrote to his beloved wife, Bess, from 1910 to 1959. Selected from 1,268 letters discovered in Bess's house after her death in 1982, this extraordinary collection provides an inside look at Truman's life, his thoughts, and his dreams.

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cover of Dear Delia: The Civil War Letters of Captain Henry F. Young, Seventh Wisconsin Infantry

Dear Delia

The Civil War Letters of Captain Henry F. Young, Seventh Wisconsin Infantry

Henry F. Young, edited by Micheal J. Larson and John David Smith

University of Wisconsin Press, 2019

Dear Delia chronicles the story of Henry F. Young, an officer in the famed Iron Brigade, as told through 155 letters home. His insights, often poignant and powerful, enable readers to witness the Civil War as he did. Young covers innumerable details of military service—from the camaraderie, pettiness, and thievery he witnessed among the troops, to the brutality of internecine war. He was an equally astute observer of the military leadership, maneuvers and tactics, rumored troop movements, and what he considered the strengths and weaknesses of African American soldiers. From newspapers, he retained a firm grasp of Wisconsin and national politics, often noting incidents of graft and corruption and offering pointed opinions regarding the 1864 presidential election. Above all, Young’s communications highlight his unflagging patriotism—his fierce determination to preserve the Union no matter the cost. Candid, contemplative, thorough, and occasionally humorous, Young provides a clear window into everyday events as well as into war, society, and politics. Civil War enthusiasts will appreciate this correspondence, as it reveals the perspective of a young officer from America’s western heartland, a regional viewpoint generally omitted from Civil War–era documentary projects.
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cover of Dear Dr. Menninger: Women's Voices from the Thirties

Dear Dr. Menninger

Women's Voices from the Thirties

Howard J. Faulkner and Virginia D. Pruitt, eds.

University of Missouri Press, 1997

In 1930 Dr. Karl A. Menninger, one of America's most distinguished psychiatrists, was asked by the editor of Ladies' Home Journal to write a monthly column that would address mental health issues and answer questions from readers. The result was the widely popular column "Mental Hygiene in the Home," which ran for eighteen months at a time when the American public was just beginning to popularize the idea of mental hygiene and psychotherapy.

Of the thousands of letters Dr. Menninger received, only a small number were printed in the Journal. However, he wrote personal responses to all of them, over two thousand of which have been preserved. For this book, Howard J. Faulkner and Virginia D. Pruitt have selected more than eighty exchanges that provide intimate glimpses into the personal lives of women from across the country.

Most notable in this fascinating collection is the precision and clarity of the women's voices, as well as Dr. Menninger's incisive, analytical, and elegantly phrased replies. The topics that were of major concern to these women included their own sexuality, cheating husbands, problem children, and interfering in-lawsþin other words, the same issues that many women still face today. Although Dr. Menninger's advice may sometimes be questionable by modern standards, these letters provide a useful look at the social assumptions of the 1930s.

Included in the book is an excellent introduction by the editors that traces America's affection for advice columns, chronicles Dr. Menninger's life and work, and provides an overview of the development of psychotherapy. Entertaining as well as informative, these letters not only offer a valuable reflection of women's issues during the Depression era but also invite comparison and contrast with contemporary problems, attitudes, and values.

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cover of Dear Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth

May Swenson

Utah State University Press, 2000

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cover of Dear Helen: Wartime Letters from a Londoner to Her American Pen Pal

Dear Helen

Wartime Letters from a Londoner to Her American Pen Pal

Edited by Russell M. Jones & John H. Swanson

University of Missouri Press, 2009

In 1937, Betty Swallow was a young London secretary enjoying the social whirl of the world’s most sophisticated metropolis. She came to know fellow movie buff Helen Bradley of Kansas City through a movie magazine, and their initially lighthearted correspondence about film stars came to encompass a world war—and reflect Betty’s unique view of it.
            Today there are countless descriptions of wartime Britain from historians and journalists; Dear Helen depicts World War II—from its buildup to its aftermath—from the perspective of an average London citizen, with details of daily life that few other documents provide. In letters written from 1937 to 1950 and now housed at the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Betty shares accounts of the Blitz and wartime deprivations, then of the postwar austerity programs, in passages that interweave daily terror with talk about theater, clothes, and family outings.
Betty is the epitome of English pluck: patriotic, practical, and romantic despite the bombs falling about her. She laments the lack of ingredients for a proper Christmas pudding, but Helen’s holiday package of candy, nylons, and cosmetics helps make up for the shortages. She shares graphic descriptions of the relentless attacks on London but tells also of how silk stockings or a trip to the cinema could take the edge off nights spent in an underground shelter—where “lying about on wet and cold stone floors, breathing bad air” took a toll on her health.
            These letters do more than document headlines and daily life: they candidly convey British attitudes toward American isolationism prior to Pearl Harbor and reveal how the English felt about taking on the Nazis alone. They also tell of the social changes that transformed English society—including Betty’s transformation from Tory to Socialist—and how the cold war had a different impact on British citizens than on Americans. Throughout the exchange, the haven that Betty and Helen shared in the world of movies becomes a frequent counterpoint to the stress of the war.
            Dear Helen is a book of rich personal drama that further attests to the British-American “special relationship.” Through this sustained correspondence spanning the war years, we meet a real person whose reflections shed light on British opinion during the harshest times and whose experiences give us new insight into the horror of the Blitz.
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cover of Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President

Dear Mr. Lincoln

Letters to the President

Edited by Harold Holzer

Southern Illinois University Press, 2006

During the Civil War, Americans felt themselves to be on intimate terms with their commander in chief, sending President Abraham Lincoln between two hundred and five hundred pieces of mail every day—letters that expressed the concerns, aspirations, grievances, and obsessions of the nation. Ranging from weighty political tomes to greetings accompanying homespun gifts, the letters reflect the pulse of the country in a time of upheaval. This illuminating collection includes straightforward correspondence from ordinary Americans requesting autographs and favors as well as pleas from the influential, such as the anguished open letter from New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley imploring Lincoln to end his “remiss” policy of caution on emancipation. This new paperback edition, featuring twenty-two illustrations, portrays a president clearly eager to review and respond to the advice, criticism, and requests of the nation’s citizens.

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cover of Dear Munificent Friends: Henry James's Letters to Four Women

Dear Munificent Friends

Henry James's Letters to Four Women

Susan E. Gunter, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 2000

Henry James was not only a prolific novelist but also a prolific letter writer. This edition of 150 previously unpublished letters to four of his female contemporaries reveals James to be a warm, witty, and astute commentator on a world now lost. The James revealed in these engaging letters is a vital, clever, and lively man with an intense interest in affairs of his day. The letters present a delightful picture of Victorian-Edwardian culture, including health cures (Fletcherizing and going to health spas), literary scandals (he feared writer Edith Wharton would be destroyed by her mad husband Teddy), domestic affairs (the marriage market, child rearing, antiquing, decorating, and gardening), and historical events (the Civil War, Queen Victoria's funeral, England's great Coal Strike, the Dreyfus case, and World War I).Susan Gunter has selected and annotated correspondence between James and four women in his social milieu: Alice Howe Gibbens James, wife of William James; Mary Cadwalader Jones, wife of Frederic Rhinelander Jones (New York socialite and Edith Wharton's brother); Mary Frances Prothero, wife of Cambridge academic Sir George Prothero; and Lady Louisa Wolseley, wife of Viscount Garnet Wolseley, commander-in-chief of the British Forces. Of the 10,000 extant letters by James, over two-thirds of them have never been published. The selection presented here is designed to reveal the writer's human side, his humorous and warm views of Anglo-American life over a fifty-year span, as well as his intimate participation in nineteenth-century women's daily lives. Editor Susan Gunter has provided an introduction that offers a helpful historical overview of nineteenth-century women's roles, a biographical register of people mentioned in the letters, a chronology, and brief biographies of the four women correspondents. Readers interested in gender studies, biography, intellectual and cultural history, and literary history will find this book fascinating.
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cover of Dear Wizard: The Letters of Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White

Dear Wizard

The Letters of Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White

edited by Nicholas Delbanco

University of Michigan Press, 2014

Dear Wizard is a carefully selected, highly crafted gathering of letters from over three decades of correspondence between authors Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White. This correspondence, in part a contest to outdo one another with exotic and outlandish letterhead, ranges in tone from carefree to grave and covers topics as diverse as the art and practice of writing, the state of the writer’s profession, and age, illness, love, and loss.
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cover of Dearest Letty: The World War II Love Letters of Sgt. Leland Duvall

Dearest Letty

The World War II Love Letters of Sgt. Leland Duvall

Leland Duvall

University of Arkansas Press, 2011

Leland Duvall was a now-and-again farm worker with a grade-school education when he received his World War II draft notice at his father's farm near Moreland, Arkansas, in March of 1942. He departed for training in California, where he began to write to Letty Jones, a Pottsville girl he'd had a crush on for several years. From the first correspondence through the end of the war, Leland sent Letty a torrent of letters, hundreds of careful and undeniably heartfelt missives-utterly tender but never sentimental, reliably charming and gently humorous-written daily from desert sands, pup tents, hospital beds, armored cars, and bombed-out buildings. That Duvall's writing is a tour de force of wit, elegance, and erudition is all the more poignant because he was a man who was almost entirely self-taught. The letters, discovered by Duvall's daughter four years after his death in 2010, are here enriched by his longtime friend and colleague Ernie Dumas, who provides facts about where Duvall was and the perils he endured while penning his epistles, information that was often missing in dispatches that were necessarily censored and always guided by Duvall's effort not to bore or worry his "dearest Letty." Duvall's lively intelligence and obvious joy in writing come through on every page, joining with vividness the patina of the time and the bright shine of a timeless love affair.
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cover of Dearly Beloved Friends: Henry James's Letters to Younger Men

Dearly Beloved Friends

Henry James's Letters to Younger Men

Susan E. Gunter and Steven H. Jobe, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2004

While the novelist Henry James never formed a permanent relationship with a single individual, in the last decades of his life he increasingly formed passionate attachments to younger men of diverse talents and traits. Dearly Beloved Friends collects carefully edited texts of an ample selection of the writer's personal and often intimate letters -- many of them long withheld from publication -- to four of those men: the sculptor Hendrik Andersen (1872-1940), the dilettante Dudley Jocelyn Persse (1873-1943), and the writers Howard Overing Sturgis (1855-1920) and Sir Hugh Walpole (1884-1941). These letters reveal the humourous, warm side of the literary "Master," and document as never before the depth and eroticism of his love for a number of his friends. Witty, poignant, and passionate, the letters reveal a man in full control of both his rhetoric and his relationships.
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cover of Debate of the Romance of the Rose

Debate of the Romance of the Rose

Christine de Pizan

University of Chicago Press, 2010

In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365–1430?), one of the most renowned and prolific woman writers of the Middle Ages, wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular and widely read Romance of the Rose for its blatant and unwarranted misogynistic depictions of women. The debate that ensued, over not only the merits of the treatise but also of the place of women in society, started Europe on the long path to gender parity. Pizan’s criticism sparked a continent-wide discussion of issues that is still alive today in disputes about art and morality, especially the civic responsibility of a writer or artist for the works he or she produces.


In Debate of the “Romance of the Rose,” David Hult collects, along with the debate documents themselves, letters, sermons, and excerpts from other works of Pizan, including one from City of Ladies—her major defense of women and their rights—that give context to this debate. Here, Pizan’s supporters and detractors are heard alongside her own formidable, protofeminist voice.  The resulting volume affords a rare look at the way people read and thought about literature in the period immediately preceding the era of print.

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cover of Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz

Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz

Kaethe Kollwitz

Northwestern University Press, 1988

One of the great German Expressionist artists, Kaethe Kollwitz wrote little of herself. But her diary, kept from 1900 to her death in 1945, and her brief essays and letters express, as well as explain, much of the spirit, wisdom, and internal struggle which was eventually transmuted into her art.
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cover of Dispatches from the Revolution: Russia 1916-1918

Dispatches from the Revolution

Russia 1916-1918

Morgan Philips Price

Duke University Press, 1998

A special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, Morgan Philips Price was one of the few Englishmen in Russia during all phases of the Revolution. Although his Bolshevik sympathies accorded him an insider’s perspective on much of the turmoil, his reports were often heavily revised or suppressed. In Dispatches from the Revolution, Tania Rose collects for the first time Price’s correspondence from Russia—official and unofficial, published and unpublished—to reveal a side of Russian life and politics that fell largely unreported in the years before, during, and after the Revolution.
This collection includes Price’s pre-censored observations and comment, written for a range of British publications, as well as letters, postcards, and other writings. A foreword by Eric Hobsbawm and introductory material by Rose place Price’s observations in biographical and historical context. Dispatches from the Revolution offers an account of the Russian Revolution from an eyewitness whose political commitment, fluency in Russian, and extensive travel far beyond the cities permitted him to write, uniquely, not only of metropolitan news and politics, but also of the experiences and issues signficant to ordinary peasants, workers, and soldiers in remote areas of the Russian empire.
An important source to scholars of Russian history, this book will also appeal to general readers with interests in Russia, journalism, and world affairs.
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cover of Do They Miss Me at Home?: The Civil War Letters of William McKnight, Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry

Do They Miss Me at Home?

The Civil War Letters of William McKnight, Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry

Donald C. Maness

Ohio University Press, 2010

William McKnight was a member of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry from September 1862 until his death in June of 1864. During his time of service, McKnight penned dozens of emotion-filled letters, primarily to his wife, Samaria, revealing the struggles of an entire family both before and during the war.

This collection of more than one hundred letters provides in-depth accounts of several battles in Kentucky and Tennessee, such as the Cumberland Gap and Knoxville campaigns that were pivotal events in the Western Theater. The letters also vividly respond to General John Hunt Morgan’s raid through Ohio and correct claims previously published that McKnight was part of the forces chasing Morgan. By all accounts Morgan did stay for a period of time at McKnight’s home in Langsville during his raid through Ohio, much to McKnight’s horror and humiliation, but McKnight was in Kentucky at the time. Tragically, McKnight was killed in action nearly a year later during an engagement with Morgan’s men near Cynthiana, Kentucky.

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cover of Dog Tags Yapping: The World War II Letters of a Combat GI

Dog Tags Yapping

The World War II Letters of a Combat GI

M.D. Elevitch. Foreword by Jean Van Doren

Southern Illinois University Press, 2003

A chronicle of war infused with uncommon cheer, Dog Tags Yapping: The World War II Letters of a Combat GI is a young man’s education in life and death and a narrative of war told completely in letters. 

During World War II, thousands of high school graduates were drafted into the army to be trained in colleges as engineers or other technicians but instead were assigned to fighting units and joined the great assault in Europe after D-Day. One of those reprogrammed combat infantrymen was Morton Elevitch from Duluth, Minnesota. Elevitch’s cartoons, drawings, and extremely unconventional letters home—rescued from box-in-the-basement oblivion after a more than fifty-year dormancy—recover the story of one rerouted GI in a voice that is compelling and new. Embellished with a boyish flair, the quirky and playful documents collected here impart a distinctly personal and uncalculated record of war, family, and coming of age. “It’s much easier to wield a melancholy pen than to sit down and cry,” Elevitch declares to his father. 

Sparkling with a patina of wit and the bittersweet allure of lost innocence, the words and letters of “Privitch Elevate” offer the immediacy of the events as they unfolded. With the ease and expertise expected of a more seasoned storyteller, the young Elevitch escorts readers through his basic training and departure for Europe, duty in Brittany with the 94th Division and departure for Germany, combat under Patton’s command, wounding by mortar fragments, convalescence in England, and his return to France with the Signal Corps to guard prisoners and await demobilization. But along with these letters are the stories of his relationships with his parents, his brother, the men of his company and even the prisoners of war. The author’s perspectives on the war radically change. Both comic and tragic in its treatment of war’s chaos and tedium, this sensitive personal history covers experiences from the adjustment to military life and the temptations of flesh to the pain of wounds and recovery and the exposure to foreign countries and cultures.   

Presaging his career as a novelist and editor, Elevitch’s words and drawings sketch an audacious and highly imaginative portrait of a young man during an exceptional time in world history. Evocative of life lived and nearly lost, his jarring accounts of combat reveal a soldier who was wounded not only in body but also in soul, in a war that changed him forever—just as it changed everyone it touched. Reproduced here as they were originally written, alongside a gallery of photos and hand-drawn battle maps, Elevitch’s cartoons and letters were initially intended for only three persons. But with their unique historical value and affecting exploration of the human spirit, they resurface in Dog Tags Yapping and result in an exhilarating ride for all readers through his “wild bivouac of the mind.”

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cover of Dolly and Zane Grey: Letters from a Marriage

Dolly and Zane Grey

Letters from a Marriage

Candace C. Kant

University of Nevada Press, 2011

Popular western writer Zane Grey was a literary celebrity during his lifetime and the center of a huge enterprise based on his writing, which included books, magazine serials, film and stage versions of his stories, even comic strips. His wife, Dolly, closely guided Grey's career almost from its beginning, editing and sometimes revising his work, negotiating with publishers and movie studios, and skillfully managing the considerable fortune derived from these activities.

Dolly maintained the facade of a conventional married life that was essential to Grey's public image and the traditional middle-class values his work reflected. This facade was constantly threatened by Grey's numerous affairs with other women. The stress of hiding these dalliances placed a huge strain on their relationship, and much of Zane and Dolly's union was sustained largely by correspondence. Their letters--thousands of them--reveal the true nature of this complex partnership. As edited by Candace Kant, the letters offer an engrossing portrait of an extremely unorthodox marriage and its times.

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cover of Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship, Letters, 1921-1960

Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane

Forty Years of Friendship, Letters, 1921-1960

Edited by William Holtz

University of Missouri Press, 1991

The friendship between Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane began in 1920 in the publicity office of the American Red Cross in Paris and continued until Thompson’s death in 1961. Although both women are today remembered primarily for their connections with others —Thompson as the wife of Sinclair Lewis, and Lane as the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House” books —each was remarkable in her own right.

Both women had a vital engagement with life that led them in fearless pursuit of   experience.  In 1939, Thompson appeared on the cover of Time, which judged her second only to Eleanor Roosevelt among influential women of the day. Typical of Lane were her travels through the mountains of Albania, the deserts of Syria, and Soviet Georgia in the 1920s and her visit as a journalist to Vietnam in 1965 at the age of seventy-eight.

The correspondence of these two talented and articulate women reveals their personal concerns, social ideas, and political/economic philosophies and how they changed over time. Their letters tell the story of the first generation of women to come of age during the twentieth century, as they tried to cope with problems that women still face today. Along with the letters themselves, Holtz has included annotations and footnotes that provide biographical information, as well as explaining personal and topical references.
 

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cover of Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon

Double Duty in the Civil War

The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon

Edited by George S. Burkhardt

Southern Illinois University Press, 2009

In 1861 at the age of eighteen, Edward Woolsey Bacon, a Yale student and son of well-known abolitionist minister Leonard Bacon, left his home in New Haven, Connecticut, to fight for the United States. Over the next four years Bacon served in both the Union navy and army, which gave him a sweeping view of the Civil War. His postings included being a captain’s clerk on the USS Iroquois, a hospital clerk in his hometown, a captain in the 29th Connecticut Infantry (Colored), and a major in the 117th U.S. Colored Infantry, and he described these experiences in vibrant letters to his friends and family. Historian George S. Burkhardt has compiled these letters, as well as Bacon’s diary in the impressive Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon.

Bacon tells of hunting Confederate commerce raiders on the high seas, enduring the tedium of blockade duty, and taking part in riverine warfare on the Mississippi. He recalls sweating in South Carolina as an infantry officer during drill and picket duty, suffering constant danger in the battlefield trenches of Virginia, marching victoriously on fallen Richmond, and tolerating the boredom of occupation duty in Texas.

His highly entertaining letters shed new light on naval affairs and reveal a close-knit family life. The narrative of his duty with black troops is especially valuable, since few first-hand accounts from white officers of the U.S. Colored Troops exist. Furthermore, his beliefs about race, slavery, and the Union cause were unconventional for the time and stand in contrast to those held by many of his contemporaries.

Double Duty in the Civil War is filled with lively descriptions of the men Bacon met and the events he experienced. With Burkhardt’s careful editing and useful annotations, Bacon’s letters and diary excerpts give rare insight into areas of the Civil War that have been neglected because of a lack of available sources. Given the scarcity of eyewitness testimonies to navy life and life in African American regiments, this book is a rarity indeed.

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cover of Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations

Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples

Letters and Orations

Ippolita Maria Sforza

Iter Press, 2017

This volume presents in translation 100 previously unknown letters of Ippolita Maria Sforza (1445–1488), daughter of the Duke of Milan, who was sent at age twenty to marry the son of the infamously brutal King Ferrante of Naples. Sforza’s letters display the adroit diplomacy she used to strengthen the alliance between Milan and Naples, then the two most powerful states in Italy, amid such grave crises as her brother’s assassination in Milan and the Turkish invasion of Otranto. Still, Ippolita lived as a hostage at the Neapolitan court, subject not only to the threat of foreign invasion but also to her husband’s well-known sexual adventures and her father-in-law’s ruthlessness. Soon after Ippolita’s mysterious death in 1488, the fraught Naples-Milan alliance collapsed.
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