The letters provide an opportunity, rare for intellectual historians, to enter the moral worlds of general readers and hear their longings, their ideas about ideas, and their concerns about the modern forces undermining American intellectual life.11 Precisely because this mail echoes many of the uses of Nietzsche in published sources, it encourages us to consider how interest in Nietzsche traversed the borders thought to divide American “highbrow” from “middlebrow” and “lowbrow” readers.12 In the letters to the Nietzsche Archive, all the brows are represented.
