ABSTRACT

The extensive scope of this collection means that this documentary record of the reception of German literature in England is a valuable scholarly resource. One of the most important features of British literary and intellectual history over the past 250 years is the influence of German literature. From the second half of the 18th Century, through the first decades of the 19th, German books and ideas attracted, then gained the attention of a nation. Despite the acknowledged importance of the influence on writers such as Coleridge and Carlyle the subject, though often alluded to, was rarely studied. This collection provides a guidebook through the masses of periodical and allows the English side of the Anglo-German literary relationship to be explored in detail. In order to make the collection useful to scholars with a wide range of interest, it has been divided into three parts:

Part 1 is a chronological presentation of commentary on German literature in general. It also contains collective reviews of multiple German authors, notices of important anthologies and reactions to influential works about Germany and its culture.

Part 2 collects reviews of 18th Century individual German authors and Part 3 is devoted to the English reception of Goethe and Schiller. Parts 2 & 3 contain cross-references to the collective reviews of Part 1.

Containing over 200 British serials and articles and reviews from all the major English literary periodicals, the collection also includes a broad sampling of opinion from the more general magazines, including some popular religious publications.

part |80 pages

Works of Goethe’s Midcareer: Iphigenie (1779-1797), Egmont (1788), Tasso (1790), Reinecke Fuchs (1794), Das Märchen (1795), Hermann und Dorothea (1797)

part |50 pages

Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796) and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821, rev. 1829)

part |47 pages

The Later Goethe: Wahlverwandschaften (1809), Zur Farbenlehre (1810), Novelle (1828), Writings on Science and Art

part |80 pages

Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811 et. seq.)

part |50 pages

Conversations with Eckermann

part |53 pages

Goethe’s Correspondence

part |196 pages

Friedrich von Schiller (1757-1805): General Comment and Criticism