Arranged chronologically, David Luke's verse translations are set alongside the German originals to give a picture of Goethe's poetic development.

Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.

First published by Wordsworth Editions 1999 and 2007. First published by Princeton University Press in 2016.

This meticulously edited Goethe collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Introduction Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe Novels & Short Stories The Sorrows of Young Werther Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years Elective Affinities The Good Women Novella; or, A Tale The Recreations of the German Emigrants - Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (A Fairy Tale) Plays The Wayward Lover; or, The Lover's Caprice Goetz Von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand Clavigo Stella Brother and Sister Iphigenia in Tauris Egmont Faust - Faust (Part One) - Faust (Part Two) - Faustus (Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Torquato Tasso The Natural Daughter The Fellow Culprits Poetry Hermann and Dorothea Erotica Romana Reynard the Fox The Sorcerer's Apprentice Songs Familiar Songs Ballads Cantatas Odes Sonnets Epigrams Parables Art God, Soul, and World Religion and Church Antiques Venetian Epigrams Elegies West-Eastern Divan Songs from Various Plays Miscellaneous Poems Personal Writings & Letters Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life (Autobiography) Maxims and Reflections Letters from Italy (Italian Journey) Letters from Switzerland Letter to Zelter Correspondence with Wilhelm Von Humboldt and His Wife Correspondence with K. F. Zelter Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe Schiller-Goethe Correspondence Scientific & Literary Writings Theory of Colours Shakespeare and Again Shakespeare Oration on Wieland Winckelmann and His Age Introduction to the Propyläen Criticism on Goethe & His Works: Goethe: The Writer (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Byron and Goethe (Giuseppe Mazzini) The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' (H. B. Cotterill) Goethe's Faust (George Santayana) Goethe's Farbenlehre: Theory of Colors (I&II) (John Tyndall)

This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright, and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Offering fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all Goethe’s major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe’s greatest work, Faust, Jeremy Adler also provides many original readings of Goethe’s poetry, beginning with the poems written in his early youth. Alongside Goethe’s work, Adler analyzes the incidents of his life, including his love affairs and his meetings with the luminaries of his age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Uniquely, Adler also shows how Goethe’s encyclopedic interest in literature, science, philosophy, law, and many other fields became important for a wide range of later scientists and thinkers. Among the figures he influenced were Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. This biography shows that Goethe was in fact the first of the moderns—a maker of modernity.

Contains a brief biography of Goethe, a collection of some of his best-known works, and a sampling of his personal correspondence. Includes his four major works, together with a selection of his finest letters and poems. The Sorrows of Young Werther is a story of self-destructive love that made its author a celebrity overnight at the age of twenty-five. Its exploration of the conflicts between ideas and feelings, between circumstance and desire, continues in his controversial novel probing the institution of marriage, Elective Affinities. The cosmic drama of Faust goes far beyond the realism of the novels in a poetic exploration of good and evil, while Italian Journey, written in the author's old age, recalls his youth in Italy and the effect of Mediterranean culture on a young northerner. Translators include W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, David Constantine, Barker Fairley, and Elizabeth Mayer.