Germany: A Literary Anthology

By following over eighty North American and British literary travellers, starting in the sixteenth century with some of the earliest travel accounts in English, Brian Melican presents a wide range of writing about, or set in, Germany. Letters from Boswell and Garrick, Coleridge and Wordsworth; the journals of Herman Melville and Henry James; fiction by D. H. Lawrence and Ford Madox Ford reveal an oft-forgotten richness in encounters with Germany before the horrors of the twentieth century. Post-war writing ranges from the spy fiction of Len Deighton, to travel writing by Leigh Fermor, and the writers who dissected post-Nazi Germany. The diversity of writing about Germany today encompasses light-hearted accounts and more searching passages taken from an eclectic selection of authors. Recorded and imagined images of Germany have changed dramatically across the centuries. Yet views on many of its features especially its cities and rivers, customs and cuisine have often remained constant. This anthology invites readers to venture beyond the usual discussion about this country at the very heart of Europe.