Author · 14 titles

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) stands among the supreme figures of world literature — a poet, playwright, novelist, and thinker whose influence reaches far beyond Germany. With Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship he helped invent the Bildungsroman, the novel of education and self-formation that shaped European fiction from Dickens to Joyce. The Sorrows of Young Werther made him a European sensation overnight; Faust became the great drama of human striving, doubt, and desire. Court adviser, scientist, traveller, and restless creator, Goethe lived a life as searching as his art. Few writers have so fully embodied the idea that literature is a path to knowing oneself.

All contributors