www.friendsofcoleridge.com                                                        Last updated 19 May 2009

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

• Review by Chris Murray
  BARS Bulletin & Review 24, January 2009, 66-67.
  Reproduced here by kind permission of the BARS Reviews Editor (posted 18 May 2009)
   

• Coleridge Poetical Works Corrections and Additions, J.C.C.Mays
  December 2008 update on www.friendsofcoleridge.com/CPWindex.htm : 568X1 Faustus: From the German of Goethe
   

• Review by Joyce Crick
  The Coleridge Bulletin NS32, Winter 2008, 71-84
   

• Review of the Stylometric analysis, Hugh Craig
  The Coleridge Bulletin NS32, Winter 2008, 85-88
   

• Review by Ritchie Robertson
  Translation and Literature - Volume 17, Part 2, Autumn 2008, 247-250
  Available online (pay per view if non subscriber) at Project Muse
   

• 'On Coleridge as translator of Faustus from the German of Goethe', Frederick Burwick
  This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the European Romantic Review 19.3 July 2008, 247-252. 
  The European Romantic Review  is available online at http://www.informaworld.com
   

• Review by Norman Fruman in CHOICE September 2008
  CHOICE is the American Library Association review journal. It is online for subscribers only - but a 60 day trial subscription enables a free viewing.
   

• Review by Paul Hamilton for Angermion
  Angermion: A Yearbook of Anglo-German Cultural Relations Volume 1 (2008) 173-9.
  This is a link to the publisher's website: the article is not currently available in electronic form.
   

• 'Faust pas'
  Houghton Library, Harvard. The most execrable pun since 1821, but a fine reproduction of a Retzsch / Moses plate from Faustus.
   

• 'I wonder if Coleridge was likely to get the following things so wrong...'
  Comment on the translation, by Guido Kohlbecher. (posted 30 May 2008)
   

• Den Romantikgehalt prüft die Stilmaschine
  James Woodall, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 May 2008
   

• 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)
   

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

• Review by Susanne Schmid for The Wordsworth Circle
  Posted 1 April 2008
   

• '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 for $6.95 on a daily subscription)
   

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

• Response by Frederick Burwick to 'A Gentleman of Literary Eminence'
  Posted 29 February 2008
   

• '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
   

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

The translation - an e-text:

• Scanned OCR  text of the 1821 Boosey Edition at www.einam.com

 Review of the original 1821 edition of this translation:

• Thomas Carlyle, Review of Faustus: from the German of Goethe.
  Scanned 5 June 2008 from New Edinburgh Review (1822)

The illustrations:

• A website on illustrations of Goethe, which includes the whole set of Peter Cornelius' (medievalizing) illustrations and the whole set of Retzsch's outlines or 'Umrisse', which were copied by Moses for the English edition. LMU Goethezeitportal Moritz Retzsch Umrisse zu Goethes Faust

The background:

• 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.
   

• Lina Baumann, Die englischen Übersetzungen von Goethes Faust... (1907)
  A survey of English translations of Faust. Unlike Hauhart, it doesn't cover the 1820's in any detail.
  See http://www.archive.org/details/dieenglischenbe00baumgoog 
   

• Frederick Burwick The Damnation of Newton: Goethe's Color Theory and Romantic Perception (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986) 257-60 -- not in the Burwick/McKusick bibliography -- 'interesting for the co-editor's earlier, more nuanced proposal of STC as translator and some comments by Paul Zall not used in the edition'.
   

• 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.
   

• Hugh Craig -A Companion to Digital Humanities
  A very useful online introduction to stylometrics.
   

• [Charles Edward Dodd] An Autumn Near the Rhine (London: John Murray, 1821 2nd ed.)
  Available on Google books. This anonymous account of a tour of Germany includes well informed commentary on Goethe (Letter XIII - pp213-230) and the author's own verse translations of poems by Goethe, Schiller and others. Not in the Burwick/McKusick bibliography. It is a useful contemporary account of the reception and an instance of anonymous English translation of German poetry.
   

• 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. see http://www.archive.org/details/receptionofgoeth00hauh
   

• 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"!'
   
• Anthony Kenny, The Computation of Style (Pergamon, 1982)
  'An excellent and relatively non-technical introduction to stylometric analysis and the relevant statistical theory' 
  (Cit. www.philocomp.net, the website of Peter Millican the creator of Signature, the stylometric analysis software used by James C. McKusick.)
   
• 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.