The Lessing Yearbook, the official publication of the Lessing Society, is a valuable source of information on German culture, literature, and thought of the eighteenth century. Lessing Yearbook XXXVIII (2008/2009) offers interested readers six articles on Lessing and his works-including the first-time publication of an eighteenth-century portrait of the writer and an important analysis of Karl Vietor's tribute to Lessing. Other articles feature Gottsched, Moritz and an important evaluation of `Ein Weltmann aus Deutschland' by Karl Guthke. Richard E. Schade, signs off with personal musings on his long-term involvement with Lessing. Contributors: Wolfgang Albrecht, Andreas Beck, Sabine Durchholz, Hans Carl Finsen, Susan E. Gustafson, Karl S. Guthke, Carsta Off, Ulrich Profitlich, Norbert Puszkar, Richard E. Schade, David L. Smith, J.M van der Laan, Carsten Zelle.

In Hans Christian Andersen in American Literary Criticism of the Nineteenth Century, Herbert Rowland argues that the literary criticism accompanying the publication of Hans Christian Andersen's works in the United States compares favorably in scope, perceptiveness, and chronological coverage with the few other national receptions of Andersen outside of Denmark. Rowland contends that American commentators made it abundantly evident that, in addition to his fairy tales, Andersen wrote several novels, travelogues, and an autobiography which were all of more than common interest. In the process, Rowland shows that American commentators "naturalized" Andersen in the United States by confronting the sensationalism in the journalism and literature of the time with the perceived wholesomeness of Andersen's writing, deploying his long fiction on both sides of the debate over the nature and relative value of the romance and the novel, and drawing on two of his works to support their positions on slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.