Faust

Goethe's Faust, whose first part appeared in 1808 and whose second was published in 1832, opens with a wager between the Lord and Mephistopheles and then with the scholar Faust, who has exhausted learning and makes a pact for a moment of fulfilment. Part One follows his return to appetite and his entanglement with Gretchen, a young woman in a small German town. Part Two moves into imperial politics, classical myth, and the project of reclaiming land from the sea. The work is a verse drama of desire, knowledge, and consequence, not a single realistic plot, and it treats the bargain as a test of striving rather than as a simple sale of a soul.

Quarter bound in red leather with yellow moire silk sides. Red slipcase with a colour reproduction of the frontispiece on the front panel.