The Writers Who Translated Goethe into English Became Some of the Best Writers in English

'Outsiders and several important women of letters were drawn to the cult of Goethe.

Gregory Maertz at Humanities.

"Goethe’s reputation in Britain did not take shape in response to the lyrical Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) or the magisterial Faust (1808). Instead, it grew out of the controversy surrounding his personality, ethics, and character. From the first English translation of Werther in 1779 to Carlyle’s translation of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship in 1824, criticism of Goethe in Britain and North America was inflected by what English literary historian George Saintsbury later derided as 'anthropological' interpretations and moralistic readings projected back onto the author."

See Goethe, Faust, in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 47, (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 45.

See Carlyle, "The Hero as King", from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 6.

See George Eliot, The Lifted Veil, in Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 3; and Middlemarch, in Great Books of the Western World (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 46.

See Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thoreau", in volume 6, and "Nature", from Essays, Second Series, "Self-Reliance", from Essays, First Series, and "Montaigne", from Representative Men, in volume 10, Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963).