Pre-Owned Georg Buchner: The Major Works: A Norton Critical Edition (Paperback) 0393933512 9780393933512

The Georg B?chner Prize is the highest literary honor for German language writers, and the full extent of B?chner's influence--from Gerhart Hauptmann to Christa Wolf, Max Reinhardt to Robert Wilson, Alban Berg to Tom Waits--defies cataloging.

When Georg B?chner died in 1837 at the age of twenty-three, he left behind a small and heterogenous body of work, most of it unpublished: three plays, a novella, a political pamphlet, a dissertation, medical lectures, and letters. Matthew Wilson Smith has newly translated B?chner's introduction to On Cranial Nerves. Each text is accompanied by explanatory annotations. The editor's introduction examines the complexities of B?chner's short life and how they informed his writing. The volume also contains ten illustrations.

"Contexts" includes B?chner's correspondence with the people who knew him best, impressions of B?chner from a fellow medical student, excerpts from B?chner's diary, the wanted poster calling for B?chner's arrest for political conspiracy as well as the real-life inspirations his novella, Lenz, and his best-known play, Woyzeck.

For ease of reference, "Criticism" is topically arranged by work and includes assessments by, among others, Laura Ginters, Victor Brombert, Bertolt Brecht, Henry Schmidt, Andrew Webber, Rainer Maria Rilke, and George Steiner. Three accounts of important productions of Danton's Death are reprinted, including John Houseman's remarks on Orson Welles's staging. Finally, the speeches of four winners of the Georg B?chner Prize--Paul Celan, Christa Wolf, Heiner M?ller, and Durs Gr?nbein--are reprinted in their entirety.

A Chronology of B?chner's life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.