Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was born in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary. His major works include Das Stunden-Buch (1905), the two-volume New Poems (1907–1908), the prose work The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), the Duino Elegies (1923), and the Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). He traveled widely across Europe and spent important years in Paris, where he served for a time as secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He died of leukemia in Switzerland. He also wrote Letters to a Young Poet.
