GOETHE Johann Wolfgang von [Oeuvres]. Schriften. Erstter [-achter] Band.

Goedecke IV/III, 2-3; Hagen 11.

First edition of Goethe’s Works, with the first printing of Faust, Ein Fragment.

“The first that the world in general knew of Goethe’s Faust was the work entitled Faust. Ein Fragment, published in Leipzig by Göschen, which appeared in 1790 in the seventh volume of the poet’s Collected Writings (Schriften) and also as a separate publication. Its 2,137 lines present the despairing scholar’s opening monologue and his conversation with Wagner, the close of the ‘pact’ scene and the succeeding scenes from ‘Auerbachs Keller’ as far as and including the Cathedral scene, giving the story of Faust’s introduction into the world and his love for Gretchen, except for its final catastrophe’ (Alexander Gillies, Goethe’s Faust.  An Interpretation, 1957).

The edition is illustrated with eight engraved frontispieces by Johann Heinrich Lips, Christian Gottlieb Geyser (after the drawings by Johann Heinrich Ramberg), D. Berger, Jakob Wilhelm Mechau, and Angelica Kauffmann.  The engraved vignettes to each of the titles are by Geyser or Grögory after Johann Wilhelm Mail, Daniel Chodowiecki, Adam Friedrich Oeser, and Lips. Volume three has the rare vignettes to pages 3 and 136. As noted by Hagen, several variant printings of this first edition are known. The present copy with the corrected title page to volume I and volumes IV, V and VII in the corrected state; volume III with the rare vignettes on pages 3 and 136.

A beautifully bound copy in excellent state of conservation of this monument of German literature.