The books that Thurber wrote - with titles such as MY WORLD AND WELCOME TO IT, THE BEAST IN ME AND OTHER ANIMALS, MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES and THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY - were not only works of great humour, but also offered glimpses into the author's own life. As with most humorists, however, Thurber employed exaggeration and good-natured self-deprecation, and so what glimpses of the writer's life we get are no more than distorted peeks into his mind and psyche. Rather it is in his letters that Thurber offered some candid glimpses into who he really was, and why the prisms through which he viewed the world were so delightfully distorting.<br> As Harrison Kinney, the editor for this collection, notes in his description of this volume, Thurber's letters trace, in wondrous fashion, his progress from immature, love-sick college boy to his tragic last days battling illness. His interesting and comic comments in his personal letters on all these events, the majority of them never before made public, contribute to an entertaining, informal form of autobiography.