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.

‘The reader will gain much valuable information from this book. The bibliographical section is very good; many chapters bring familiar and less familiar works into sharp focus.’

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘… the Cambridge History is the best single-volume history of the totality of German literature’.

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

‘This will be a standard reference book of all German, Swiss German, and Austrian literature. The roster of contributors is very impressive, as is the result.’

Source: Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

‘… the first complete German literary reference work of its kind covering the most current trends in contemporary literature and criticism into the 1990s, The Cambridge History of German Literature is surprisingly lucid, readable, and accessible to beginning and advanced literary scholars.’

Source: BBR Gazette