century there has clearly developed a new, forcible, original style of German novel writing.  Seldom has the short story been handled more skilfully and felicitously than by such men as Paul Heyse, Gottfried Keller, C. F. Meyer, Theodor Storm.  Seldom has the novel of tragic import and passion been treated with greater refinement and delicacy than in such works as Fontane’s Effi Briest, Ricarda Huch’s Ludolf Ursleu, Wilhelm von Polenz’s Der Buettnerbauer, or Ludwig Thoma’s Andreas Voest.  And it may be doubted whether, at the present moment, there is any country where the novel is represented by so many gifted writers or exhibits such exuberant vitality, such sturdy truthfulness, such seriousness of purpose, or such a wide range of imagination as in contemporary Germany.

All these dramatists, lyric poets, and novelists, and with them not a few essayists, philosophers, orators, and publicists,[1] of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will speak in the following volumes to America and other countries of the English language.  They have been arranged, in the main, chronologically.  The first three volumes have been given to the mature work of Goethe and Schiller—­time-tested and securely niched.  Volumes IV and V contain the principal Romanticists, including Fichte and Schelling; Volume VI brings Heine, Grillparzer, and Beethoven to view;

Volume VII, Hegel and Young Germany; Volume VIII, Auerbach, Gotthelf, and Fritz Reuter; Volume IX, Hebbel and Ludwig; Volume X, Bismarck, Moltke, Lassalle.  Of the second half of the collection there might be singled out:  Volume XIV (Gottfried Keller and C.F.  Meyer); Volume XV (Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, Emperor William II.); Volume XVIII (Gerhart Hauptmann, Detlev von Liliencron, Richard Dehmel).  The last two volumes will be devoted to the most recent of contemporary authors.

The editors have been fortunate in associating with themselves a notable number of distinguished contributors from many universities and colleges in this country and abroad.  A general introduction to the whole series has been written by Professor Richard M. Meyer of the University of Berlin.  The last two volumes will be in charge of Professor Julius Petersen of the University of Basel.  The introductions to Goethe and Schiller have been prepared by Professor Calvin Thomas, of Columbia University; that to the Romantic Philosophers by Professor Frank Thilly, of Cornell University; that to Richard Wagner by Professor W. R. Spalding, of Harvard University.  And, similarly, every important author in this collection will be introduced by some authoritative and well known specialist.

The crux of the whole undertaking lies in the correctness and adequacy of the translations.  How difficult, if not impossible, a really satisfactory translation is, especially in lyric poetry, no one realizes more clearly than the editors.  Their only comfort is that they have succeeded in obtaining the assistance of many well trained and thoroughly equipped scholars, among them such names of poets as Hermann Hagedorn, Percy MacKaye, George Sylvester Viereck, and Martin Schuetze.