This book describes German literary history up to the unification of Germany in 1990. Contributors, all leading scholars in their field, take a fresh look at the main authors and movements, and also ask what Germans in a given period were actually reading and writing, what they would have seen at the local theatre or found in the local lending library; it includes, for example, discussions of literature in Latin as well as in German, eighteenth-century letters and popular novels, Nazi literature and radio plays, and modern Swiss and Austrian literature. A prominence is given to writing by women. The book is designed for general readers as well as students and scholars: titles and quotations are translated, and there is an extensive bibliography.

• Acclaimed Cambridge History available in paperback • The first history (in any language) of German literature up to and including Reunification and an in-depth English-language history of German literature • Accommodates late twentieth-century ideas about history, narrative and literature, and gives prominence to women writers

Contents
List of contributors; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. The Carolingian period and the early Middle Ages (750–1100) Brian O. Murdoch; 2. The high and later Middle Ages (1100–1450) Nigel F. Palmer; 3. The early modern period (1450–1720) Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly; 4. The German enlightenment (1720–1790) Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres; 5. Aesthetic humanism (1790–1830) Nicholas Saul; 6. Revolution, resignation, realism (1830–1890) Gail Finney; 7. From naturalism to national socialism (1890–1945) Ritchie Robertson; 8. The literature of the German Democratic Republic (1945–1990) Helen Fehervary; 9. German writing in the West (1945–1990) Moray McGowan; Select bibliography; Index.