Goethe established a major European reputation and profoundly influenced his contemporaries and literary successors, not least among them the British Romantic writers Coleridge, Scott, and Byron.

• Offers a comprehensive one-volume study of a major European literary figure.
• Deals in depth and detail with the totality of Goethe's output and activity.

John R. Williams is honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at the University of St Andrews. He has published numerous scholarly articles on German literature and is the author of Goethe's 'Faust' (1987). In 1982 he was awarded a prize by the Theodor-Storm-Gesellschaft in an international competition for verse translation.