In 1949, Jean Cocteau spent twenty days in New York, and began composing on the plane ride home this essay filled with the vivid impressions of his trip. With his unmistakable prose and graceful wit, he compares and contrasts French and American culture: the different values they place on art, literature, liberty, psychology, and dreams. Cocteau sees the incredibly buoyant hopes in America's promise, while at the same time warning of the many ills that the nation will have to confront-its hypocrisy, sexism, racism, and hegemonic aspirations-in order to realize this potential. Never before translated into English, Letter to the Americans remains as timely and urgent as when it was first published in France over seventy years ago.

`I'm whispering into your ear - and we couldn't be further apart.' A woman, a phone call, a final conversation. In this extraordinary and prophetic monologue a woman fights for the person she loves. Jean Cocteau's iconic play explores our desperate need for human relationships - and the machine that has changed them forever.

Original illustrations by Jean Cocteau and Andrzej Klimowski Two of the seven monologues by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) in this edition were written for Édith Piaf. The other five were written for Cocteau’s friend, the celebrated actor Jean Marais, to perform on radio. Although perhaps a minor part of Cocteau’s output of films, plays, poems and ballet scenarios, these exquisite miniatures remain a fascinating form of his dramatic expression. Georges Feydeau (1862-1921) is best known for his enduring farces, such as A Flea In Her Ear, yet he wrote over 20 monologues for actors to perform at charity concerts and in fashionable drawing rooms. The six included in this volume were written over a period of 16 years from 1882. Peter Meyer’s translations of eleven of these monologues were commissioned by the BBC and performed on radio by leading actors including Eileen Atkins, Jill Bennett, Richard Briers, Judi Dench, Alec McCowan and Timothy West. The Liar and I Lost Her have been newly translated for this volume.

The meaning of poetry and the sociological and political significance of art are dealt with in these letters. Jacques Maritain (18 November 1882 28 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he is responsible for reviving St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pope Paul VI presented his "Message to Men of Thought and of Science" at the close of Vatican II to Maritain, his long-time friend and mentor. Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau (5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Along with other Surrealists of his generation (Jean Anouilh and Rene Char for example) Cocteau grappled with the "algebra" of verbal codes old and new, mise en scene language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Pablo Picasso, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Edith Piaf, whom he cast in one of his one act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940, and Raymond Radiguet.

In Jean Cocteau's updating of the Orpheus myth, Orphee (Jean Marais) is a famous poet whose obsession with a mysterious princess - representing death - and a series of cryptic radio broadcasts causes him to neglect his wife. When she is killed, the guilty poet travels to the Underworld to win her back - and to find the princess. `Orphee' is famous for its dreamlike quality, with images of mirrors and the Nazi occupation of France.