Anton Reiser: A Psychological Novel (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture, 1)

Well-received in its own day, but all but forgotten in the nineteenth century, Anton Reiser (1785) has now finally regained the popular attention it so richly merits. Called a 'biography' by its author, it is in fact autobiographical, though it is also a searching psychological and religious discourse. Through a thirty-year-old's depiction of how his first twenty years were misdirected, it shows Moritz's spiritual journey, describing his struggle to move beyond the narrow Pietistic world of his youth. This lively but careful translation reinforces his standing as one of the most fascinating minds of the European Enlightenment.