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For the 1948 film, see Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948 film). For the 2004 film, see Letter from an UnknownLetter from an Unknown Woman (German: Der Brief einer Unbekannten, sometimes appearing without the definite article “der”) is a novella by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. The work first appeared in the 1 January 1922 issue of the Viennese Neuen Freien Presse,[1] before being published in book form as part of the collection Amok: Novellen einer Leidenschaft (Insel Verlag, 1922).The novella tells the story of an author who, while reading a letter written by a woman he does not remember, gets glimpses into her life story. It is generally considered to be Zweig’s most famous work of fiction.
Plot: A rich and well-known writer (R.), returning home to Vienna from one of many holidays, finds a long letter from an unknown woman (Fräulein). As a teenager the woman had lived with her poor widowed mother in the same building and had fallen totally in love with both the opulent cultured lifestyle of her neighbour and the handsome charming man himself. Her passion for the writer was not lessened by the flow of attractive women spending the night with him, nor when she had to leave Vienna and moved to Innsbruck when her mother remarried. At age 18 she returned to Vienna, took a job and tried to meet the writer again. He did not recognise her and, without revealing her name, she succeeded in spending three nights with him before he disappeared on a long holiday. Pregnant, she lost her job and had to give birth in a refuge for the indigent. Resolved that their child should have a good life, she spent nights with or became mistress of various rich men but would never marry because her heart belonged always to the writer. One night with a current lover, she saw the writer in a night club and went home with him instead. To him, she was just an agreeable companion for that night, as he again did not recognise her. In the 1918 flu pandemic, the child died and she, ill herself, wrote the letter to be posted after her death.
English translations: Brief einer Unbekannten has been translated into English three times: by Eden and Cedar Paul, as part of a collection entitled Passion and Pain, for Chapman and Hall in 1924;[2] by Jill Sutcliffe, as part of a collection entitled The Royal Game and Other Stories, for Harmony Books in 1981; and by Anthea Bell for Pushkin Press.
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