Tim Ingold is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.

“Tim Ingold’s correspondents include not only his fellow humans and their works, but also animals, trees, rocks, rivers, sunshine, wind, rain, and snow – in short, all of the variegated, sensate, ever transforming materials of a universe in constant becoming. Ranging across what the author has previously referred to as the “4 A’s” (Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture) and beyond, and expressed through a prose that is at once exactingly lucid and engagingly lyrical, these writerly exchanges set out not merely to describe but embody the co-emergence and inextricable intertwinement of human and other than human being in the world.”Stuart J. McLean, University of Minnesota“In his most artistic work, Tim Ingold invites the reader to wander through these 27 touching and breathing pieces of writing. During the process of reading them, an image has been growing along my correspondence with the author: this work is not a building, nor a box, rather a tent, or a beehive; it is made of linen cloths and wooden reeds provisionally rooted into the different grounds it encounters. It goes along with you, reader, adapting itself to the occurring weather.”Nicola Perullo, Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo“Tim Ingold has taught with unparalleled grace how to think with the textures of a living world. In these marvelous new dispatches from the deep woods and coastal tidelands, from museum galleries and temple ruins, Ingold recovers an art of attentive writing.”Anand Pandian, Johns Hopkins University“Tim Ingold’s extraordinary book presents a celebration of the care of letter writing which in our age risks to disappear. Correspondences helps us to relearn the art of thinking and writing from the heart and is an urgent book for the 21st century.”Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Director, Serpentine Gallery

• Preface and Acknowledgements Invitation Part 1: Tales from the Woods Introduction 1.1 Somewhere in Northern Karelia… 1.2 Pitch-black and firelight 1.3 In the shadow of tree being 1.4 Ta, Da, Ça Part 2: Spitting, Climbing, Soaring, Falling Introduction 2.1 The foamy saliva of a horse 2.2 The mountaineer’s lament 2.3 On flight 2.4 Sounds of snow Part 3: Going to Ground Introduction 3.1 Scissors paper stone 3.2 Ad coelum 3.3 Are we afloat? 3.4 Shelter 3.5 Doing time Part 4: The Ages of the Earth Introduction 4.1 The elements of fortune 4.2 A stone’s life 4.3 The jetty 4.4 On extinction 4.5 Three short fables of self-reinforcement Part 5: Line, Crease and Thread Introduction 5.1 Lines in the landscape 5.2 The chalk-line and the shadow 5.3 Fold 5.4 Taking a thread for a walk 5.5 Letter-line and strike-through Part 6: For the Love of Words Introduction 6.1 Words to meet the world 6.2 In defence of handwriting 6.3 Diabolism and philophilia 6.4 Cold blue steel Au revoir