The correspondence in this collection, written almost exclusively in English, spans a period of twenty years: it begins one year before the personal acquaintance with George Seferis and ends shortly before the poet's fatal illness in the summer of 1971.

During the '50s, the correspondence is rather sparse and focuses mainly on two themes: the effort to learn from the poet whatever I could about his work while working on my doctoral thesis at Oxford and, later in the same decade, the collaboration with Philip Sherrard in translating and presenting a selection of Seferis' poems for our anthology Six Poets of Modern Greece.

In the '60s, the correspondence becomes more frequent and is shaped by a series of events that necessitated more regular communication. Among these are the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Seferis in 1963, the compilation of a volume of his poems in English translation which Sherrard and I began in 1964, Seferis' trip to the United States for his honorary doctorate from Princeton University in 1965, the political situation in Greece and the censorship imposed by the colonels' dictatorship following the coup in April 1967, Seferis' stay at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1968, and his internal conflict in striving to become the conscience of his country, as well as the preparation, during 1969, of an extensive interview for the Pariw Review series.

The correspondence from the early '70s is perhaps the most casual and, in a way, the most personal.

The publication includes an extensive introduction by Edmund Keeley, a large number of photographs of G. Seferis as well as the manuscript of the 'Statement '68' and an appendix with letters from Eugene McCarthy, T.S. Eliot, Henry Miller, Philip Sherrard, Robert Keeley, Maro Seferis, and others related to the subject.