Editorial censorship has long obscured Goethe's Roman Elegies, which were inspired by Goethe's sexual liberation in Italy and his love for the woman he took as his unofficial wife on his return to Germany. They are here presented as Goethe boldly conceived them, together with the long-supressed narrative poem known as The Diary. Completing the edition is a selection from Goethe's more light-hearted and much censored cycle of erotica, the Venetian Epigrams. An illuminating Introduction by Hans Vaget provides the background to these poems, as well as showing some of the profound and...

Goethe's themes of unrequited love, the pain of rejection, deepening despair, and their tragic consequences are as relevant today as when the work was first published in 1774. This hugely influential novel was immediately bought, printed, read, exported, and imitated throughout Europe, and what Goethe called the novel's "fire rockets" have continued to blaze through the centuries, influencing, among many others, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. The reader's understanding and appreciation are enhanced by the Norton Critical Edition's inclusion of a rich selection of Goethe's letters and diary...