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The Essential Goethe is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethe's writings ever published in English. It provides English-language readers easier access than ever before to the widest range of work by one of the greatest writers in world history. Goethe's work as playwright, poet, novelist, and autobiographer is fully represented. The volume also offers a selection of Goethe's essays on the arts, philosophy, and science, which give access to the thought of a polymath unrivalled in the modern world. Primarily drawn from Princeton's authoritative twelve-volume Goethe edition, the translations are highly readable and reliable modern versions by scholars of Goethe. The volume also features an extensive introduction to Goethe's life and works by volume editor Matthew Bell.
About the author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was one of the greatest writers of the German Romantic period. Matthew Bell is professor of German and comparative literature at King's College London. His books include Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology and Melancholia: The Western Malady.
Summary
First published by Wordsworth Editions 1999 and 2007. First published by Princeton University Press in 2016.
Additional text
"[T]his is the best available one-volume anthology of Goethe’s works, spanning the full range of his output of poetry, drama, novels, literary criticism, autobiography, philosophy and science. The scope and insight of his work is extraordinary and his style eminently readable in every discipline."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer
