Goethe established an international literary reputation overnight with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), a story of disappointed love and pathological sensibility which mounted a powerful challenge to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. His later novel Elective Affinities (1809) develops these themes further in a brilliant study of the tensions between social convention and the need for emotional fulfillment. Goethe's exploration of marriage, adultery, and the relations between the sexes is as relevant today as it ever was. The epic two-part drama of Faust (1805 and 1832) occupied Goethe throughout his life. It explores the nature of good and evil through a rewriting of the medieval German legend. This is a cosmic drama unlike any other, a reflection on the world, heaven, and hell in the tradition of Dante. The prose translation by Barker Fairley is exceptionally readable. Italian Journey (1816-29), written in the author's old age, recalls the years he spent in Italy as a young man educating himself. It is a vivid account of the enormous impact the Italian Renaissance and Mediterranean culture makes on a young Northerner -- a theme familiar from works by many later German writers including Nietzsche and Mann.

All as readable as the day they were written, these four very different books demonstrate the variety and fertility of Goethe's creative powers, while underlining the consistency of his life-long preoccupations with man's destiny as a creature of spirit, reason, and feeling in astrange universe.

The Everyman volume will also include a small selection of Goethe's lyric poetry and his letters. Goethe is considered the finest lyric poet of the German language and one of the finest letter writers of his or any age.