Faust

Faust is one of the pillars of Western literature. This classic drama presents the story of the scholar Faust, tempted into a contract with the Devil in return for a life of sensuality and power. Enjoyment rules until Faust's emotions are stirred by a meeting with Gretchen, and the tragic outcome brings part one to an end. Part two, written much later in Goethe's life, places his eponymous hero in a variety of unexpected circumstances, causing him to reflect on humanity and its attitudes to life and death.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) was a novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, and scientist. He wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther when he was just twenty-four. "Faust," his most enduring work, took fifty-seven years to write and was published in its entirety only after Goethe's death at eighty-three.