The original manuscript of these diaries, which present an eye-witness record of historical events in the worlds of art and music at the turn of the century, lay unread in the library of an American university until Antony Beaumont read it in search of the truth about Mahler-Werfel and Zemlinsky. But he found more: an account, in intimate detail, of the four years during which Mahler-Werfel grew from adolescence into womanhood. Opening with her first, heady affair with Klimt, the diaries break off shortly before her marriage to Mahler. They portray the vitality of everyday life, descriptions of significant artistic events, and insights into the behavioural patterns and linguistic conventions of the Vienna of 1900.

Alma Mahler-Werfel was one of the most fascinating and ambivalent of twentieth-century women. Her book "Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters" (1940) includes 159 of Mahler's letters, yet only 37 of these were published in their original, unedited form. Alma's omissions, abridgements and alterations were all part of the legend, and reveal that it was her intention to present herself in as flattering a light as possible. This new edition restores the original texts, and includes a further 188 letters as well as other, hitherto unpublished documents. The letters are supplemented by commentaries, which provide background information about the people and events mentioned in them, and help place the letters in their cultural and historical context. These documents depict a close and sometimes explosive relationship between two people of widely differing background, character and temperament. The Mahler that emerges from these authentic, unabridged sources is warmer and more touchingly human than the figure as presented by Alma in her expurgated selection of Memories and Letters.