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This first of five volumes of the complete correspondence between Sigmund Freud and his fiancée Martha Bernays is, quite simply, a revelation. It is the most engrossing of all the collections of Freud's letters—and he was an extraordinary letter-writer. In addition, the editorial team has done an outstanding job. Grubrich-Simitis provides a superb introduction to what she rightly calls the adventure of reading these letters, and the work that she, Fichtner, and Hirschmüller have done with the text is impeccable, their commentary meticulous yet terse.1 A model edition. One now has a better idea of the suspense felt by readers of the installments of David Copperfield (one of Sigmund's first presents to Martha and an important point of reference during a violent quarrel), although we, unfortunately, will have to wait a year between volumes, not just a month.
The complete correspondence is to contain 1539 pieces, of which only 93 of Sigmund's and none of Martha's were published by Ernst Freud (S. Freud, 1960). As Grubrich-Simitis notes, Ernst chose to represent the light side of his parents' love story and tells us little about Sigmund's recurrent attacks of jealousy and crises of distrust (p. 32).2 She is justified in asserting that the complete edition offers something completely new (p. 15), and, one may add, even after only one volume. Not only is this Freud's most massive correspondence; it is “the most intimate,” the one in which “he reveals himself in the most direct, undisguised, and unprotected manner” (p. 18). The result is often painful, and, at the risk of neglecting the