Goethe

A.N. Wilson is a noted and prize winning biographer with studies of Tolstoy, Dickens, Milton and C.S. Lewis to his credit among others. Here he turns his outstanding gifts to a study of the life and thought of Goethe - poet, dramatist, politician. Goethe's life touched every aspect of what made the world become modern. And the great poetic drama of Faust is in essence the story of this. Not a biography in the traditional sense, Wilson breaks the mould - it is the portrait of an age seen through the prism of Goethe's continuing obsession with the Faust myth - the story of a German necromancer who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. The relevance of this will not escape the modern reader and Goethe is shown to be one of the great prophets of modern Europe, the Europe of today.

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is one of the outstanding biographers of our time - his biographies of Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, Milton and Hilaire Belloc are beyond compare. 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