In 1786, when he was already the acknowledged leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe set out on a journey to Italy to fulfil a personal and artistic quest and to find relief from his responsibilities and the agonies of unrequited love. As he travelled to Venice, Rome, Naples and Sic[...]

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 Councillo[...]

Goethe's Faust reworks the late-medieval myth of Dr Faust, a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract or wager with the devil, Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seek to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last for ever. But[...]

'I can promise to be candid, not, however, to be impartial.' A selection of the most insightful maxims and reflections from one of Germany's greatest ever thinkers. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity o[...]

Editorial censorship has long obscured Goethe's Roman Elegies, which were inspired by Goethe's sexual liberation in Italy and his love for the woman he took as his unofficial wife on his return to Germany. They are here presented as Goethe boldly conceived them, together with the long-supressed narr[...]

The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend "the truth about the how of the organism." Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He ca[...]

Published in concert with the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth, this selection of great works from the German writer includes The Sorrows of Young Werther and Faust, among others.[...]

This edition includes both part I and II of the drama. It represents a significant departure from its predecessor in terms of supporting apparatus and the "Interpretative Notes" have been expanded. "Contexts" includes five new selections by Goethe on the composition of the novel. "Criticism" include[...]

One of the world's first best-sellers, this tragic masterpiece attained an instant and lasting success upon its 1774 publication. A sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist, the tale addresses age-old questions--the meaning of love, of death, and the possibility of redemption--in the form[...]

"Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", a novel of self-realization greatly admired by the Romantics, has been called the first Bildungsroman and has had a tremendous influence on the history of the German novel. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who strives to break free[...]

In the last decade, behavioral economics, borrowing from psychology and sociology to explain decisions inconsistent with traditional economics, has revolutionized the way economists view the world. But despite this general success, behavioral thinking has fundamentally transformed only one field of [...]