This new collection, intended for the student and the interested general reader of German alike, includes both traditional examples, and those which fall outside the usual canon. The sixteen novellas in the volume have been carefully chosen on the bases of length, historical significance, popularity, and interest, and have been extensively glossed by the editor, who also provides an introduction to the history and theory of the genre. Siegfried Weing is Professor of Modern Languages at the Virginia Military Institute.

Originating with Boccaccio during the Italian Renaissance, the novella, a cyclical collection of frame stories in prose, quickly inspired many imitations in Italy, France, Spain and Great Britain. However, it was not widely used in Germany until the end of the eighteenth century, when, inspired by Goethe, the genre retained the original medium but abandoned the cyclical format; it rapidly grew in popularity, dominating the nineteenth century literary scene, and became the object of much artistic speculation. The orthodox theory of the novella has sharply divided the critical establishment;...