# How to Begin

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/edmund-de-waal/how-to-begin/9781784746704

![How to Begin](https://quivercdn.com/covers/chatto-windus/edmund-de-waal/how-to-begin_978-17-8474-670-4-c7942e01.webp?v=2026-09-26%2011%3A28%3A21)

- Book: [How to Begin](https://www.bookquiver.com/edmund-de-waal/how-to-begin) ([How to Begin.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/edmund-de-waal/how-to-begin.md))
- Authors: [Edmund de Waal](https://www.bookquiver.com/edmund-de-waal)
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus
- ISBN: 978-17-8474-670-4
- Pages: 240
- Published: 2026-11-05
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Hardcover

## Description

'Enchanting, illuminating and tender' - Nigel Slater ‘I believe you can live in a book of poems’ A book about finding a creative voice and becoming an artist via a startling rediscovery in Edmund de Waal’s family archives – letters between his grandmother and the charismatic poet Rainer Maria Rilke ** With letters translated from the German by prizewinning translator, Karen Leeder ** This is a story about how to begin. In 1921, Elisabeth Ephrussi writes a letter to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She too is a poet, or an aspiring one – a young law student in Vienna just beginning her creative life. To her surprise, Rilke writes back with advice. A five-year correspondence follows, an exchange of lyrical and exhortatory letters alongside books, translations, poems in manuscript. They never meet. Fifty years later, Elisabeth’s grandson, Edmund de Waal, wants to be a poet and a potter. He sends her his own poetry, and she responds with guidance and Rilke’s Duino Elegies . How to Begin follows Edmund’s journey as an artist. This is a book about failure, about starting again, about apprenticeship and asking for and then disregarding advice, about working out ways to keep going when you don’t know how. It is a moving, intergenerational story about the traces of memory within a family, and a deeply personal reflection on how we learn resilience with the support of others. It is for any reader starting out, seeking the permission to begin.