www.friendsofcoleridge.com                                                        Last updated 05 May 2008

Coleridge as translator of Goethe's Faust

The editors, Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick, published at Oxford University Press, Faustus, From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge  (2007). This edition claims that Coleridge is the author of the anonymously published translation Faustus, From the German of Goethe (London: Boosey, 1821). The editors, who are both eminent Coleridge scholars, presented their case for Coleridge's authorship at the Coleridge Summer Conference 2006. Responses to this substantial claim have been coming in as follows:

Reviews and responses:

• Kelly Grovier, Review in TLS (15 February 2008)
  The Times Literary Supplement online. 
   

• 'A Gentleman of Literary Eminence':  
  Essay length critique of the attribution (21 February 2008) by Roger Paulin, Elinor Shaffer, and William St Clair.
  On London University School of Advanced Study website
   

• Response by Frederick Burwick to 'A Gentleman of Literary Eminence'
  Posted on this website (29 February 2008)
   

• Review by Christoph Bode for the Goethe-Jahrbuch 2007
  German text (posted 7 March 2008)                English translation by James Vigus.
   

• 'A Question of Evidence, or a Leap of Faith?' review by Jennifer Howard in The Chronicle of Higher Education
  Link to article at CHE website (28 March 2008 issue) available to non CHE subscribers until June)
   

• Review by Susanne Schmid for The Wordsworth Circle
  Posted on this website (1 April 2008)
   

• James Fenton, 'Faust Lost in Translation?' The Guardian, 12 April 2008
  Online at Guardian Unlimited
   

• How credible is J H Bohte as witness?
  Letter by Kelly Grovier in TLS 24 April 2008 responding to this question - TLS Online
  Letter by Thomas Carlyle 12 July 1824 - The Carlyle Letters Online (cit. James Vigus)
   

The background pre Burwick/McKusick:

• Rosemary D. Ashton, 'Coleridge and Faust' The Review of English Studies, NS28 (110) May 1977 156-167
  Available online for JSTOR subscribers.
  A survey of Coleridge's encounters with Goethe's Faust.
   

• Paul Cheshire, '"I Lay too Many Eggs": Coleridge's "Ostrich Carelessness" and the Problem of Publication',
  Coleridge Bulletin NS23, Spring 2004, 1-21.
  pp16-20 on the Coleridge - Murray relationship.
   

• William Frederic Hauhart, The Reception of Goethe's Faust in England in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1909).
  Contains a historically influential discussion of Coleridge and Goethe's Faust. This is available on Google Books. (My online viewing has been restricted to snippet views of hits but a reader based in the US has been able to access the full text.)
   

• Emma Gertrude Jaeck, Madame de Staël and the Spread of German Literature (New York: OUP, 1915)  - 'It has quite a lot on translators of Faust - it's very much of its time, but I find such early C19 reception studies sometimes amazingly interesting and useful, precisely due to the lack of a "thesis"!'
   
• William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting (London and New Haven 2nd edition 1994) - not in the Burwick/McKusick bibliography - 'a standard work that would have led them to Cornelius as well as Retzsch'.
   
• Catherine Waltraud Proescholdt-Obermann, Goethe and his British Critics (European University Studies, Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1992) - not in the Burwick/McKusick bibliography - 'to an extent updates Hauhart'.
   

This page aims to be comprehensive and even-handed. Relevant contributions of the following kind are welcomed:

• Notice of reviews or articles published elsewhere that can be added as links (if available online) or as citations if only available in print.
• New unpublished information in essay form.
• Information supplementary to letters accepted for publication in periodicals .
 

Contact Faustus Page.