Essays on German Literature and Culture, Part I

In the early 1820s, the acclaimed Victorian philosopher, social critic, and essayist Thomas Carlyle achieved a level of expertise in German language and literature that prompted editors to seek him out as a reviewer and launched his career as an essayist. Carlyle has long been credited with establishing the importance of new German writing in Britain at the time, and Essays on German Literature and Culture brings together his complete writings on the topic. This volume will be published in two parts. In the essays in part 1, Carlyle ranges broadly over German literature, much of it new to English-speaking audiences, and comments on three writers—Goethe, Richter, and Novalis—who profoundly influenced him.
 
In keeping with the Norman and Charlotte Strouse Edition of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle, these essays are accompanied by a thorough historical introduction to the material, extensive notes providing historical and cultural context while expanding on references and allusions, and a textual apparatus that carefully details and explains the editorial decisions made in reconciling the editions of each essay.

Chris R. Vanden Bossche is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Carlyle and the Search for Authority and Reform Acts: Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel, 1832–1867 and editor of several volumes in this series of editions of Carlyle’s works.

Paul E. Kerry, Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University, has published a monograph on Goethe and edited books on Carlyle, Schiller, and Franklin. He is a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford’s Programme for the Foundations of Law and Constitutional Government.

Marylu Hill is a full teaching professor in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program at Villanova University. Her publications include "A Tale of a Table: Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, and the Legacy of Thomas Carlyle" and Mothering Modernity: Feminism, Modernism, and the Maternal Muse.

Contents

List of Illustrations 
Preface 
Chronology of Carlyle’s Life 
Introduction 
Note on the Text

Essays on German Literature
Goethe’s Faust. 
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. 
State of German Literature. 
Life and Writings of Werner. 
Goethe’s Helena. 
Goethe. 
The Life of Heyne. 
German Playwrights. 
Novalis. 

Notes 
Works Cited 
Textual Apparatus 
Emendations of the Copy-Text 
Discussion of Editorial Decisions 
Line-End Hyphens in the Copy-Text 
Line-End Hyphens in the Present Text 
Historical Collation 

Index