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The original English translation of Rilke s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita Sackville-West and Edward Sackville-West - reissued for the first time in 90 years ‘The deepest mysteries of existence embodied in the most delicate and precise images. For me, the greatest poetry of the 20th century’ Philip Pullman In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press printed a few hundred copies of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, in English translation by the writers Vita Sackville-West and her cousin Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke’s masterpiece, which would go on to be rendered in English more than 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists around the world. Published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests’ translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of the Elegies. Rilke’s enchanting journey through love, death and solitude appears here in language of breathtaking immediacy and imagistic power. Featuring an introduction by critic Lesley Chamberlain, this new edition casts fresh light on one of European literature’s great masterpieces.

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