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.)
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 .