This anthology first appeared in 1827 and is testament to Carlyle’s expertise in the field of German literature – a topic on which he had become well-known as an expert due to his publication of several essays on German writing in respected British journals. In particular, Carlyle’s essays helped to build on work by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, introducing British readers to German Romanticism. The anthology contains writing by such luminaries as E. T. W. Hoffman, John Paul Friedrich Richter, Ludwig Tieck and John Wolfgang von Goethe.