<DIV><P>Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) was one of the major writers of the 20th century: a poet who turned away from poetry, and a prose writer whose great project remained unfinished at the time of her death by fire. <I>Letters to Felician</I> came both chronologically and conceptually just before the fork in the road which divides Bach-mann's career, making it an important document for reading her later work. Passionate declarations of love to a male figure, Felician, these fictional letters are also a hymn to the beauty of southern Austria, underlying Bachmann's utopian visions of her later work.</P></DIV>