Goethe

A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Wild, brilliant and has all the intelligence to rival its subject. Five Stars.' - Frances Wilson, The Telegraph 'Exuberant and wide-ranging' - Literary Review 'Passionate' - The Times A spellbinding recreation of Goethe's life and work from one of our greatest biographers. Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and insatiable curiosity that helped catapult the Western world into the modern era. A N. Wilson tackles the life of Goethe with characteristic wit and verve. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy to his later years as Germany's most respected elder statesman, Wilson hones in on Goethe's undying obsession with the work he would spend his entire life writing - Faust. Goethe spent over 60 years writing his retelling of Faust, a strange and powerful work that absorbed all the philosophical questions of his time as well as the revolutions and empires that came and went. It is his greatest work, but as Wilson explores, it is also something much more - it is the myth of how we came to be modern.

A. N. Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is a prolific and award-winning biographer and celebrated novelist, having written biographies of Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, Milton, Hilaire Belloc and Goethe. In 2007, Wilson's novel, Winnie and Wolf, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and in 2020 The Mystery of Charles Dickens was published to great critical acclaim. He lives in North London.

CONTENTS A Note on Translations Timeline 1. These Very Serious Jokes 2. Turning Life Into a Picture 3. The Spirit of Nature - Where are you, Faust? 4. Some Notes on Suicide 5. Bildung 6. Weimar 7. Archbishop of Titipu 8. Italy 9. Vulpius 10. War 11. The Friendship With Schiller 12. The Parades of Death 13. Demons 14. Ottilie 15. Eckermann 16. The Myth of Weimar 17. Soon, Peace Acknowledgements Bibliography Notes Index