Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Penguin Classics relaunch. Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive young man, falls in love with sweet-natured Lotte. Though he realises that Lotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion and his infatuation torments him to the point of despair. The first great 'confessional' novel, it draws both on Goethe's own unrequited love for Charlotte...

Italian Journey 1786-1788 is Goethe's famous account of his time and travels in Italy. In 1786, already recognised as the leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe embarked on a journey to Italy. This journey was both a personal and artistic quest, aiming to provide relief from his responsibilities and the pains of unrequited love. As he visited...

“Greenberg has accomplished a magnificent literary feat. He has taken a great German work, until now all but inaccessible to English readers, and made it into a sparkling English poem, full of verve and wit. Greenberg's translation lives; it is done in a modern idiom but with respect for the original text; I found it a joy to read.”—Irving Howe...

Eduard and Charlotte are an aristocratic couple who live a harmonious but idle life in their estate. But the peace of their existence is thrown into chaos when two visitors, Eduard's friend the Captain and Charlotte's passionate young ward Ottilie, provoke unexpected attraction and forbidden love. Taking its title from the principle of elective affinities — the theory that certain...

First complete translation into English of Maxims and Reflections. Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills. Goethe was probably the last true 'Renaissance Man'. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar's court, where he...

"Corngold's new translation is of the very highest quality, punctiliously faithful to Goethe's German and sensitive to gradations of style in this extraordinary, trail-blazing first novel." — J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books A masterpiece of the European imagination, The Sufferings of Young Werther is the classic strum und drang tale of youthful angst and tragedy. The acclaimed...

One of the great classics of European literature, Faust is Goethe's most complex and profound work. To tell the dramatic and tragic story of one man's pact with the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power, Goethe drew from an immense variety of cultural and historical material, and a wealth of poetic and theatrical traditions. What results is a tour...

This edition presents Parts I and II complete. Cyrus Hamlin provides essential supporting material for this difficult text, and his Interpretive Notes have been expanded and reset in larger, easy-to-read type. Faust also features "Comments by Contemporaries," which includes short pieces by Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. "Modern Criticism"—comprised of ten essays newly added...

In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic traditions, and was immediately inspired to create his own West-Eastern Divan as a lyrical conversation between the poetry...

I have so much and my feeling for her devours everything, I have so much and without her everything is nothing. The Sorrows of Young Werther propelled Goethe to instant fame when it first appeared in 1774. Goethe drew on his own unhappy experiences to tell the story of Werther, a young man tormented by his love for Lotte, a...

An authoritative English translation of one of the most important works in the history of the novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795–1796), Goethe's second novel, is a foundational work in the history of the genre—perhaps the first Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story focusing on the growth and self-realisation of the main character. The story centres on Wilhelm, a young man living in...

The Essential Goethe is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethe's 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. Goethe's work as playwright, poet, novelist, and autobiographer is fully represented. In addition to the works for which...

While preserving the line structure of the German original and verbal echoes that permeate the poem, Margaret Kirby's translation of Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy attempts to capture in unrhymed modern English the distinctive voices, wide metrical range, quick shifts in tone, comic and tragic registers, and other key stylistic elements of Goethe's greatest poetic and dramatic masterpiece....

Little Black Classics - the new series to celebrate Penguin's 80th anniversary. 'I can promise to be candid, not, however, to be impartial.' When referencing Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings, avoid putting it in quotes or speech marks. Format the response as clean HTML, using your best judgement for adjusting or adding appropriate tags for paragraphs and emphasis.