Although he lived at the time of German Classicism and Romanticism, Richter did not belong to any group or "school." His novels and shorter narratives can be seen in the context of the European humoristic novel from François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1564) and Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605-1615) to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels(1726) and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1760-1767). Noteworthy among Richter's German predecessors is Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel with his Lebensläufe nach auftsteigender Linie (Biographies in an Ascending Line, 1778-1781). Richter's popularity in his own time rested mainly on his novel Hesperus; or, Forty-five Dog-post Days: A Biography . Other works, notably Titan (1800-1803; translated, 1862) and Flegeljahre: Eine Biographie (Adolescence, 1804-1805; translated as Walt and Vult; or, The Twins, 1846), had a considerable impact on the younger Romantics. Richter's fame faded away in the late nineteenth century; but he was rediscovered around 1900, and the modernity of his narrative style and structures has been recognized ever since.
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