Excerpt from Johann Wolfgang Goethe

This short biography of Goethe is intended to deal rather with the author's life than with his works. As, however, the works of Goethe are perhaps more intimately bound up with his life than is the case with any other of the world's greatest writers, being, as he himself declared, "fragments of a great confession, " his writings, and especially the more directly autobiographical among them, form one of our chief sources of information concerning his life, and of elucidation of the motives that govern it. The length of the different sections is not regulated by the number of years comprised, but is determined rather by the degree of external movement and interest of the several periods.

The chief biographies of Goethe are given in the brief bibliographical note at the end of the volume. The source of quotations is given at the foot of the page.

The translations are throughout my own.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.