Ulrich Bräker is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of German literature: a self-taught man of humble origin who wrote one of the most absorbing autobiographies of the eighteenth century, a provincial laborer and goatherd who was among the first in the German-speaking lands to recognize the greatness of Shakespeare, a voracious reader and tireless writer whose thirty-five-hundred-page diary is a uniquely detailed document of his time. Although he is increasingly the object of scholarship, it is still difficult to assess Bräker's writings in their totality since two-thirds of the diary and a novel--"Jaus der Liebensritter" (Jaus the Knight of Love)--have yet to be published.

Bräker was born in Wattwil in the Toggenburg area of eastern Switzerland on 22 December 1735 to Johannes Bräker, a farm laborer, and Anna Bräker. He grew up almost entirely...