My Dear Mother

A touching collection of correspondence from over 50 famous painters, writers, and musicians to their beloved mothers. “You want to know my grades: I have bad new for you,” confesses young Baudelaire writing from boarding school. Long before F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby , he was pressing for more pocket money in a letter from summer camp. And before Gustav Courbet became a master painter, he sold his school uniform and wrote, “If I am to be an exception to every rule in every way,