RUSSIAN EMPIRE AUTHOR · TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH · DRAMA
Heinrich von Kleist
Also known as: Heinrich Von Kleist, Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç fɔn ˈklaɪst] ; 18 October 1777 – 21 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays The Prince of Homburg, Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, The Broken Jug, Amphitryon and Penthesilea, and the novellas Michael Kohlhaas and The Marquise of O. Kleist ended his life in a suicide pact by shooting himself together with a close female friend who was terminally ill. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him, as was the Kleist Theater in his birthplace Frankfurt an der Oder.
The underground man, as both literary figure and social type, first enters European aware in the nineteenth century.
— from Selected writings, 1994
Most acclaimed
Five plays
Racine was one of the greatest dramatists. The five plays included in this volume represent all phases of his career -- the first masterpiece, two plays of his middle period, the last great secular play, and the greater of the two biblical plays. In these modern and previously unpublished translations Professor Muir has made a delightful and important contribution. The translations, in blank verse, are intended not only for the general reader but for those who have long lamented that there are no versions of Racine suitable for production. - Back cover.
Selected writings
1994
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), physician and philosopher, is celebrated principally for his Religio Medici and his study of burial customs, Urn Burial, masterpieces of English prose. But a portrait of Browne as a seventeenth-century intellectual must include much that is rarely seen except by specialists. The Pseudodoxia Epidemica, for example, tracts, letters to naturalists and antiquarians, notebooks and observations on natural history, are neglected. This modernised edition includes the complete text of Urn Burial, selections from Religio Medici, and much else to give account of Browne as doctor, scientist, philosopher, Christian, political and social being. Designed for those unfamiliar with Browne's sometimes opaque prose, it includes substantial annotation and a full introduction. . Browne's elaborate wit engages us by its reflective, at times outrageous tone. He can parody himself: 'if elegancy still proceedeth...we shall, within few years, be fain to learn Latin to understand English...' He was 'rich in various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits; contemplative, imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style,' Coleridge said. His work has marked generations of English writers.
Plays
Miller Plays: 6 is the final volume in Methuen Drama's acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as 'the greatest American dramatist of our age' (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it is the first ever publication of Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits with his then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright's death in Feburary 2005. Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 and intertwines a woman's obsession with the news from Germany that government thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strange relationship with her husband. Mr Peter's Connections (1998) is an unforgettable journey through one man's mind at a time of suspended consciousness, where the living and dead intermingle in his memory. Resurrection Blues is Miller's astonishing black comedy set in a South American banana republic, that satirises global politicsand the predatory nature of a media-saturated culture. The volume also features a chronology of the writer's work and an introduction by Enoch Brater, professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan.