Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - the author of The Leopard - got married late and against the will of his parents to the Baltic noblewoman Alexandra Wolff. His relationship with Baroness "Licy", which had started in the heat of passion and romance, ended in a strange domestic arrangement in which the couple lived thousands of miles apart - Licy in her ancestral home in Latvia, Giuseppe in his run-down palazzo in Palermo - meeting only once or twice a year and exchanging long letters in Stendhalian French. In these letters - here published for the first time - their marriage is laid bare: glowing with a muted emotional fire, they deal with Giuseppe's and Licy's more pressing preoccupations and their fears at the onslaught of War, and include accounts of their diets, observations on their beloved pets and descriptions of encounters with mutual acquaintances. As a whole, they provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind and life of one of the best-loved authors of the twentieth century.
