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.

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)

Part of an exhaustive series which provides English translations of a representative proportion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's vast body of work, this volume contains such essays as "On Gothic Architecture", "On the Laocoon" and "Shakespeare: a Tribute."

'Shall I embrace you, must I let you go? Again you haunt me: come then, hold me fast!' Goethe viewed the writing of poetry as essentially autobiographical and the works selected in this volume represent over sixty years in the life of the poet. In early poems such as 'Prometheus' he rails against religion in an almost ecstatic fervour, while 'To the Moon' is an enigmatic meditation on the end of a love affair. The Roman Elegies show Goethe's use of Classical metres in homage to abcient Rome and its poets, and 'The Diary' , supressed for more than a century, is a narrative poem whose eroticism is unusually combined with its morality. Arranged chronologically, David Luke's verse translations are set alonjgside the German orginals to give a picture of Goethe's poetic development. This edition also includes an introduction and notes placing the poems in the context of the poet's life and times.