Goethe and His Publishers

Unseld is the veteran boss of Germany's huge Suhrkamp Publishers, noted for, among other things, its list of modern masters like Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse, Samuel Beckett and Max Frisch. His study is a chronological look at the great German Romantic writer's relations with his publishers, based entirely on other scholars' research. Although the result is not, as the jacket hype would have it, an ""excellent introduction to Goethe's work,"" it is an enjoyable case study that shows that, regarding the relationship between poet and publisher, the more things change the more things stay the same. One early publisher, Goschen, placed a public curse on the heads of book pirates, telling them, ""Your own wife and child will look upon you with disgust and no honest man will drink with you."" Finally, Goethe settled into a long-term relationship with another German publisher, Cotta, successfully shaking him down for money. Unseld offers a number of irrelevant but intriguing anecdotes about authors on his list like Brecht and Beckett. There are some gratuitous comments, such as one about Goethe's 28-year affair with a woman named Christiane: ""certainly a long time in the life of a person,"" and stuffy punditry about ""the duty of a publisher"" in general, which Unseld says is ""service."" The book's tone is not helped by a stiff and unidiomatic translation. ""Goethe published another work pregnant with a public...."" The author, using the German word schwanger, no doubt meant ""mature"" or ""ripe and ready."" Worth reading for Goethe fans, but real specialists will go back to the Unseld's sources, such as Ian C. Loram's unpublished dissertation, ""Goethe and the Publication of His Works."" (Nov.)