Author text
Dr. phil. Sabine Anders, born 1979, has studied English, American, and recent German literature. Her studies focused on Shakespeare, the poetry of English Romanticism, and the modern novel. Her doctoral thesis deals with the Western novels of the contemporary American writer Cormac McCarthy. M.A. phil. Katharina Maier, born 1980, studied Comparative Literature and now works as a freelance writer and translator. Her specialties are the popular historical novel of the last 25 years, the literature of the Enlightenment and the Goethe era, European and American literature of the 19th century, the more recent Irish drama, the poetry of the early 20th century, and the English novel of postmodernism. She wrote a contribution for the volume Im Gespräch: Probleme und Perspektiven der Geisteswissenschaften (in German) (edited by Bernadette Malinowski) and has been an editorial assistant for Anglia since 2005. Journal for English Philology.

Flap text
Love letters are about happiness, longing, sadness, or farewell. But they are all constant attempts to express the three words "I love you" in such a way that the other person can feel and believe the rapture of this great feeling. Even famous men of world history, such as Beethoven, Goethe, Napoleon, Lord Byron, and Kafka took up the challenge of putting love into words and conquering the hearts of their adored ones. In this book, the most beautiful love letters of great men are collected, telling stories of happiness and unhappiness, from falling in love to falling out of love, of jealousy, rapture, despair, and euphoria - and of eternal love. Heartbreaks are found just as much as small everyday things; the letters are as different as the men behind the words. They celebrate love in all its shades, fathom its ups and downs, document its failure, or prove that a happy ending can be possible.