Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. His writings straddle the cusp between the late flowering of Romanticism and Modernism and he is “widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets”.

Rilke’s best-known works include the poetry collections Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) and Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), the semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), and a collection of ten letters that was published after his death under the title Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter).