Goethe
A Life in Ideas
$59.49
- Hardcover
776 pages
- Release Date
31 December 2025
Summary
A new intellectual biography of Goethe, examining the paradox of his thought.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a poet, a novelist, a scientist and an essayist on a dizzying range of topics. In the nineteenth century, he was widely regarded as one of the most important thinkers of modern Europe. In this important and ambitious work, Matthew Bell offers a wide-ranging intellectual biography of Goethe, tracing the evolution of his thought and reassessing its va…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691153957 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0691153957 |
| Author: | Matthew Bell |
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Imprint: | Princeton University Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 776 |
| Release Date: | 31 December 2025 |
| Weight: | 1.22kg |
| Dimensions: | 56mm x 166mm x 245mm |
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Critics Review
“The great scholarly achievement of this book lies in its synthesis of Goethe’s personal writing (especially his letters) with his public work… . An epic reassessment of the founder of modern German life and letters.” * Kirkus Reviews, starred review *
“Bell’s book is a monument to academic investigation.”—Terry Potter, The Letterpress Project
“This deeply learned, crisply written biography…will be among the indispensable studies of Goethe.”—Ritchie Robertson, Literary Review
“Bell’s brilliant biography does full justice to this greatest of German Dichter und Denker, a poet and thinker with plenty to say to our times of Sturm und Drang.”—Daniel Johnson, The Critic
“Biographies necessarily look back in time, but the best of them invite us to see the present anew. This is surely one of the chief virtues of Matthew Bell’s insightful study.”—David E. Wellbery, Times Literary Supplement
“Bell does a very successful job of repeatedly bringing us back to the themes that connect the wildly diverse ensemble of Goethe’s writings.”—Rowan Williams, The Observer
Matthew Bell
Matthew Bell is professor of German and comparative literature at King’s College London. He is the author of Goethe’s Naturalistic Anthropology; The German Tradition of Psychology in Literature and Thought, 1700–1840; and Melancholia: The Western Malady; and the editor of The Essential Goethe.
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