This vivid, sometimes tragic, and often humorous literary biography brings to life as never before the extraordinary talent and complex person who was Thomas Mann.

Engrossing vignettes enable us to enter Mann's life and work from unique angles. We meet the difficult, even unsavory private man: hypochondriac and nervous, narcissistic and vainglorious, isolated and greedy for love, shy and often ungenerous. But we are also introduced to a man who lived an eventful life, was capable of great kindness, loved dogs, doted on his daughters, and listened to Jack Benny.

We experience Mann's tragedy as the quintessential German forced by the rise of National Socialism first into inner exile and then into real exile in Switzerland, Princeton, and California. His letters from this time reveal the torment that exile represented for a writer whose work, indeed whose very self, was inextricably bound up with the German language.

The book provides fresh and sometimes startling insights into both famous and little-known episodes in Mann's life and into his writing--the only realm in which he ever felt free. It shows how love, death, religion, and politics were not merely themes in "Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain," and other works, but were woven into the fabric of his existence and preoccupied him unrelentingly. It also teases out what is known about what Mann considered his celibate homoeroticism and what others have labeled closeted homosexuality. In particular, we learn about his affection for the young man who inspired the character of Tadzio in "Death in Venice." And, against the unfocused accusations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled at Mann, the book examines in human detail his relationships with Jewish writers, friends, and family members.

This is the richest available portrait of Thomas Mann as man and writer--the place to start for anyone wanting to know anything about his life, work, or times.

These twelve essays, all in English, include studies on Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Chamisso, Hauptmann, Mann, and Brach. The selection was made by the author himself, an eminent American Germanist recently retired from Yale University. Penetrating and precise, each essay achieves what he has attempted to make it, "an adventure in empathy, in critical distance, and in expression." Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

These twelve essays, all in English, include studies on Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Chamisso, Hauptmann, Mann, and Brach. The selection was made by the author himself, an eminent American Germanist recently retired from Yale University. Penetrating and precise, each essay achieves what he has attempted to make it, "an adventure in empathy, in critical distance, and in expression." Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"German Romantic criticism represents a fundamentally dialectical type of thinking, " says Ernst Behler in his Foreword. "With Romantic criticism we are on the threshold of that phase of modernity of which we are still the inheritors." Among the brilliant discussions included in this volume are selections from Friedrich Schleiermacher, On the Different Methods of Translation, Jean Paul, School for Aesthetics, Novalis, Aphorisms and Fragments, Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry, Wilhelm von Humboldt, On the Imagination, Heinrich von Kleist, On the Marionette Theater, and a little-known essay of Friedrich Holderlin, On the Process of the Poetic Mind.

This volume contains 22 stories and novellas, many appearing in English for the first time. Among the authors represented are Peter Handke, Alfred Andersch, Stefan Andres, Jurgen Becker, Ulla Merkewicz, Elisabeth Borchers, Gisela Elsner and Max von der Grun.>

For many years, Gunter Grass (born 1927) has been one of the world's most vital literary figures. From the publication of The Tin Drum through his latest pleas for sane government and civil treatment of Germany's "foreign citizens" in the 1990s, Grass has been at the forefront of both literary and political worlds. This representative volume features two important works: Cat and Mouse and The Meeting at Telgte. Both speak to our time, but under very different settings. It also includes a selection of other works to give a well-rounded view of a writer whom John Irving characterizes in his foreword as "the greatest living novelist today".

The German Library is a new series of the major works of German literature and thought from medieval times to the present. The volumes have forewords by internationally known writers and introductions by prominent scholars. Here the English-speaking reader can find the broadest possible collection of poetic and intellectual achievements in new as well as great classic translations. Convenient and accessible in format, the volumes of The German Library will form the core of any growing library of European literature for years to come. Select list of volumes now published:

-- German Medieval Tales -- German Humanism and Reformation -- Immanuel Kant: Philosophical Writings -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sufferings of Young Werther and Elective Affinities -- Friedrich Schiller: Plays -- "Intrigue and Love" and "Don Carlos" -- Friedrich Schiller: "Wallenstein" and "Mary Stuart" -- German Fairy Tales -- German Literary Fairy Tales -- German Romantic Novellas -- German Romantic Stories -- German Novellas of Realism -- German Poetry from 1750 to 1900 -- Georg Buchner: Complete Works and Letters -- Rainer Maria Rilke: Prose and Poetry -- Gottfried Benn: Prose, Essays, Poems -- German Essays on Art History -- Essays on German Theater -- Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Critical Essays