The Letters to a Young Poet first appeared in 1929 under the title Briefe an einen jungen Dichter. They consisted of ten letters that Rainer Maria Rilke had sent from 1903 to 1908 to an unknown young man, Franz Xaver Kappus, a student at the Military Academy and later a second lieutenant in the imperial army of Austria-Hungary.

Like the poet of the Book of Hours, Franz Xaver Kappus soon abandoned his military stage and devoted himself to literature. These ten letters provide a brief yet substantial picture of Rilke's Poetics and, above all, of his artistic Ethics.

[Excerpt from the publisher's or edition's presentation text]