At last an engaging and highly readable guide to the works and significance of Goethe. The year 1999 saw the 250th anniversary of the birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer. Appropriately, literary scholars within Germany and beyond paid tribute to this remarkable talent. But a number of commentators also noted that Goethe is often revered rather than read, known of rather than known. This study remedies this state of affairs by offering an introduction to Goethe and his works for the English-speaking reader -- now inpaperback and with all quotations. The authors concentrate on the literary work and offer analyses that represent an impassioned, but by no means uncritical, advocacy -- one that seeks to persuade both academic critics and general readers alike that Goethe is one of the key figures of European modernity. To an extent that is virtually unique in modern literature, Goethe was active in a whole number of literary genres. He was a superb poet, unrivaled in the variety of his expressive modes, and in his ability to combine intellectual sophistication withexperiential immediacy. He also wrote short stories and novels throughout his life, ranging from the The Sorrows of Young Werther, to The Elective Affinities. He was also a highly skilled dramatist, both in the historical mode and in the classical verse-drama. Above all else, Goethe is the author of Faust: a work that attempts -- and achieves -- more than any other modern European drama. Martin Swales is Professor of German at University College London. Erika Swales is College Lecturer and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Although Adalbert Stifter (1808-68) has long been recognised as a key figure in nineteenth-century German prose writing, his literary reputation has been curiously volatile. This major study, first published in 1984, was a reassessment of Stifter's work within the context of the tradition of nineteenth-century European fictional prose. The authors pay close attention to features of style, structure and narrative perspective in order to suggest that Stifter's heavily stylised prose expresses a profound and significant irresolution. On the one hand, Stifter seeks to assert that the natural world is a divinely ordained creation; on the other, he recognises that nature is a self-regulating mechanism, a totality that is scientifically explicable. Stifter emerges as a writer of European stature. This tightly organised, lucid study will prove of interest to students of German literature and serve as an introduction to Stifter for those who take an interest in European prose fiction.

This work by the Swiss/German poet, Gottfried Keller, is part of the Bristol Classical Press German Texts series. The series is designed to meet the needs of the fast-growing high school and undergraduate market for texts in the German language. Each text comes with English notes and vocabulary, and with an introduction by an editor with an expert knowledge both of the work and of its literary and cultural context