Reading these heretofore unpublished works by Melanie Klein is certain to surprise their readers, regardless of their previous familiarity with her work. Bound though she was to an earlier vision of the psychoanalytic situation and to an epistemology that today may strike many analysts as archaic, Klein’s ideas remain fresh and provocative. In this commentary I sketch out the controversies in which she was involved at the time of the lectures and seminars, and discuss how we might think about them in light of contemporary developments.