Thus, while his book sales do not bear out the legend that Richter was the most popular writer of his time—far from it—he and his novel
Hesperus, oder 45 Hundsposttage (1795; translated as
Hesperus; or, Forty-Jive Dog-post Days, 1864) had real fans who cut off locks of his or his dog's hair, proposed marriage to "Jean Paul," and named their daughters after his heroine.
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 Francois 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 Lebenslaufe nach auftsteigender Linie (Biographies in an Ascending Line, 1778-1781). Richter's popularity in his own time rested mainly on his novel Hesperus. Other works, notably Titan (1800-1803; translated, 1862) and Flegeljahre (Adolescence, 1804-1805; translated as Walt and Vult; or, The Twins, 1846), had a considerable impact on the younger Romantics.
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