Faustus. From the German of Goethe. Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. liv + 335. Cloth £ 85.00.

• James Engell

When, after almost two centuries, it is newly claimed that a major writer, critic, and poet has translated an important work, perhaps the most important work, of another world famous author and poet, then attention, even controversy, is secured. In September 1821 in London appeared an anonymous English translation of selections from Part I of Goethe’s Faust, with illustrations by Henry Moses based on the 1816 series of twenty-six engravings by Moritz Retzsch. The publisher Thomas Boosey never divulged the translator, and no author ever claimed the work. In 1971, Paul M. Zall presented evidence that the translator was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This book, edited by one of Zall’s former students, James McKusick, now a well-known critic, and by Romantic scholar Frederick Burwick, acknowledges Zall’s work immediately but makes the claim for Coleridge in much greater detail.

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