Hardly any eighteenth-century German writer was as confusingly prolific as Karl Philipp Moritz, the author of novels; poems-he was one of the few Germans to be praised by Frederick II for his poetry; a playlet; psychological and moral works; books on the German, English, and Italian languages; travel volumes; works on aesthetics and mythology; and the editor of several journals as well. All of this work was produced in a span of less than fifteen years in the chaotic life of one of the more peculiar inhabitants of the world of German letters. Moritz would have been a fit subject for a novel by Jean Paul or E. T. A. Hoffmann and did play the major role in his own most important novel, Anton Reiser: Ein psychologischer Roman (1785-1790; translated, 1926).

Moritz was born in Hameln on 15 September 1756 (not in 1757, as is so often stated in the Moritz literature...