The Essential Goethe

About this book

The most comprehensive one-volume collection of Goethes writings ever published in English The Essential Goethe is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethes 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. Goethes work as playwright poet novelist and autobiographer is fully represented. In addition to the works for which he is most famous including Faust Part I and the lyric poems the volume features important literary works that are rarely published in Englishincluding the dramas Egmont Iphigenia in Tauris and Torquato Tasso and the bildungsroman Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship a foundational work in the history of the novel. The volume also offers a selection of Goethes essays on the arts philosophy and science which give access to the thought of a polymath unrivalled in the modern world. Primarily drawn from Princetons 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 Goethes life and works by volume editor Matthew Bell. Includes: Selected poems Four complete dramas: Faust Part I Egmont Iphigenia in Tauris and Torquato Tasso The complete novel Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship A selection from the travel journal Italian Journey Selected essays on art and literature Selected essays on philosophy and science An extensive introduction to Goethes life and works A chronology of Goethes life and times A note on the texts and translations