Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The first great "confessional" novel, this is a story of unrequited love, drawing on personal experience. Werther, a sensitive young man, falls in love with Lotte, knowing she is to marry another. Unable to subdue his passion, Werther's infatuation torments him to the point of despair.

Legend about a man who sells his soul to the devil.

"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 he is most famous, including Faust Part I and the...

The wavelength theory of light and color had been firmly established by the time the great German poet published his Theory of Colours in 1810. Nevertheless, Goethe believed that the theory derived from a fundamental error, in which an incidental result was mistaken for a elemental principle. Far from affecting a knowledge of physics, he maintained that such a background would inhibit understanding. The conclusions Goethe draws here rest entirely...

"This ... is a new annotated translation ... in which Corngold follows the German text closely, never knowingly using a word that was not current in English at the time the novel was written. "Backgrounds and Contexts" contains letters and diary entries written by Goethe and Johann Christian Kestner, the husband of Charlotte Buff, as well as lampoons by Friedrich Nicolai and William Makepeace Thackeray, and excerpts from Goethe's Autobiography. 'Criticism'...

Faust is a man torn between the urges of the living world and the significance of moral living. He feels nothing, he lives for nothing, and thus engages in a wager with Mephistopheles, the devil himself.

Includes part one and sections from part two.