Sebald’s award-winning fiction includes the novels Schwindel, Gefühle (Vertigo)(1990), Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants) (1992),  Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine Englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn) (1995), and Austerlitz (2001), among others, focus on themes of European history, the collective memory of the postwar generation, and the chaos of the modern world.  The novels are not entirely fiction, and have been described as part memoir, part travelogue.  Sebald’s work is frequently illustrated by uncaptioned photographs and other images throughout his text, often meant to evoke the indistinct nature of memory.

Houghton has recently acquired a collection of over thirty works by and about Sebald, a gift of Sebald bibliographer Roger Stoddard.  The materials from this accession have been cataloged separately, but may be viewed by searching Hollis.

Much of Sebald’s work has been translated into English by Michael Hulse.  For more Sebald at Houghton, see the Michael Hulse translations of W.G. Sebald papers, MS Eng 1632.

Image above is from the dust jacket of the 2001 Verlag edition of Austerlitz.

A recent critical edition of Faustus, reviewed in February in the Times Literary Supplement, claims to have solved the mystery. In 1814, Coleridge was approached by Byron’s publisher, John Murray, to translate Faust. He worked at the translation for a little over a month, and then abandoned the project out of frustration. Following the publication of two very successful editions of the work in 1820, the editors surmise, Coleridge must have been inspired to take up the project again. The 1821 edition matches his poetic style very closely, however, it was published anonymously.

Soon after this review appeared in TLS, various reactions appeared from scholars arguing against the attribution, claiming it to be based too much on conjecture. (For more on the arguments of both sides, the “Friends of Coleridge” website has collected a list of reviews and responses to the new translation.) Dr. James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, believes the following: “My opinion is that the verse in it–most of it though not perhaps all of it–is very likely [Coleridge's], a strong attribution by Burwick and McKusick. The prose summaries of the untranslated parts are probably not by [Coleridge], nor the prose introduction, though he may have directed the prose introduction’s sense of delicate subjects, tastes of the two countries, etc.”

In the midst of this scholarly fervor, we acquired a copy of the contested 1821 translation. The edition includes twenty-six plates engraved by Henry Moses after Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch’s well-known ‘outlines’. (The idea for this edition in the first place came from the successful 1820 publication of the plates by themselves.)

f*EC8.C6795.821f. Purchased with the Norton Perkins Memorial Fund and the Amy Lowell Trust. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

Benedict von Wagemann (1763-1837), a physician in Ehingen, Germany, published Die konstitutionelle Monarchie der Thiere in 1823. The work describes, in rhyming verse, a council of animals who meet to discuss their current political situation. The animals rebel against their king, design a constitution, and elect representatives to govern themselves.

The engraved frontispiece depicts this council, with over twenty cloaked and spectacled animals of various species discussing their new government:

It is possible that this work inspired a somewhat more famous 20th-century political allegory featuring animals, however, this seems to be the only known copy outside of Germany and the Netherlands. (Feel free to contradict me if you happen to know more; there is very little bibliographic information on this book that I could find.)

As always, clicking on the images will make them larger.

*GC8.W1227.823k. Purchased with the Harry K. Mansfield Book Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission.