Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Buchner has long been a favorite of students and scholars of the German postromantic, or Vorm;arz movement. His tragically short life and erratic literary career have made the examination of his collected works both realizable and fascinating. English translations of Buchner's works have been available and popular for most of this century. Even the current edition is greatly indebted to another recent Henry J. Schmidt translation of collected works (1977), but now with the noteworthy inclusion of B;uchner's letters. The text commences with a good introductory section consisting of brief biographical sketch, a discussion of the aesthetic foundation of B;uchner's works, the background of Buchner's plays and novellas, and a chronology of Bchner's life. Next Buchner's works appear in chronological order, from the earliest, ``The Hessian Messenger'' (1834) to his last incomplete drama Woyzeck (1836-37). For Woyzeck Buchner's draft notes are included as well. The final section presents Buchner's 71 surviving letters, written during the period 183137. The translations are, for the most part, idiomatic and fluid, and the layout of the text is attractive and conducive to easy reading. The addition of notes is also helpful for the general reader. While B;uchner is undeniably best read in the original German, this book is an excellent introduction for the English-speaking world. Appropriate for lower-division undergraduates, community college and secondary school students, and general readers.-C.L. Dolmetsch, Marshall University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

eorg Buchner, a German poet and dramatist, was born in Goddelau, Hesse, a former state of Germany, on October 17, 1813. He studied science and medicine at the Universities of Strasbourg and Giessen. Publication of a revolutionary pamphlet that he wrote forced Buchner to leave Giessen. He went on to study philosophy at Strasbourg and eventually became a lecturer on anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Buchner's first play, Dantons Tod (Danton's Death), was a dramatic poem about the death of a French revolutionary hero. Leonce und Lena, a satire, and Woyzeck, the story of an army barber who kills his common-law wife, were not published until after his death. Woyzeck was published in 1879, and was the basis for Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, first performed in 1925.

Buchner left the fragments of a novel, Lenz, which is the story of a poet who has much in common with Buchner himself. Buchner was rediscovered by the German expressionists in the twentieth century, who regarded him as a forerunner of the German expressionist movement.

Buchner died of typhus on February 19, 1837.

(Bowker Author Biography)