WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP. A Novel.

First edition in English, first printing. Translated from the German by Thomas Carlyle. Three volumes. Uncut in near contemporary blue cloth with titles in gilt to the spine. Half titles discarded by the binder. Those preceding books I through to VIII complete and present, as issued. An excellent very good set, the bindings square and firm with bumping and minor fraying at the spine tips. The cloth is a little faded and spotted to the spine however the gilt remains bright. The contents, with spotting primarily to the margins throughout are otherwise clean and without loss or tears. An attractive example.

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship [Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre], the second novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was originally published in German in 1795–96 by Johann Friedrich Unger, Berlin. The novel is commonly acknowledged to have played a pivotal role in founding the genre known as the Bildungsroman. Schopenhauer ranked it as one of the four greatest novels ever written; Schlegel compared it in importance to the French Revolution and Fichte's philosophy. Notably, the first English translation, complete with the 14 page 'translator's preface' is the first major literary work of Thomas Carlyle. This was the text that Ralph Waldo Emerson, T. S. Eliot and Henry James debated, praised and criticised.