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First published in German in 2006, the English translation of the “Sigmund Freud Anna Freud Correspondence 1904–1938,” edited by Ingeborg Meyer-Palmedo and translated by Nick Somers, was published by Polity Press in 2014. This comprehensive volume, comprising 513 pages, begins with a masterly and scholarly preface by Meyer-Palmedo, and constitutes the first publication of the complete correspondence—letters, postcards, telegrams, and mementoes—between Sigmund Freud and his youngest daughter, Anna. It is complete to date, as some letters are missing and may still be locked away and inaccessible. The letters are followed by an epilogue, which presents a very moving extract of a letter written by Lucie Freud on 2 October 1939 to Felix Augenfeld, describing Sigmund Freud's final days and hours. A few facsimiles of Sigmund and Anna Freud's letters are included, as well as some photographs. The epilogue is followed by six appendices and the references.
The letters and telegrams are faithful reproductions of the originals held in the Library of Congress in Washington DC. They are numbered sequentially in chronological order, with initials to indicate the author. Idiosyncratic spelling and expressions, as well as mistakes, are preserved and commented on. Patient names are revealed in cases where they have already been identified in the literature. Sigmund Freud used paper with a pre-printed letter-head bearing “Prof. Dr. Freud Wien IX, Berggasse 19,” even when he was not writing from Vienna and after he had moved to London. He typically wrote the date and city by hand, above the letter-head. Anna usually wrote the letter-heads by hand. The letters are richly annotated with numerous cross-references. Well-researched and detailed biographical information is given on the various people when they are first mentioned in the correspondence. This information will be particularly useful to readers who are not as familiar with psychoanalysis and its representatives, as it gives a wea