Who was the translator of the anonymous 1821 of Goethe’s Faustus? Could the translator have been Coleridge?

Abstract

The 1821 translation of Goethe’s Faustus is not signed by the translator. We know who translated Friedrich Schiller’shistorical dramas ThePiccolominiand The Death of Wallenstein, for example, not because the translator identified himself as Coleridge but based on evidence from within and without. This article offers a three-part review to ‘Faustus’ from the German of Goethe translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ (Oxford University Press, 2007), edited by Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick. It argues that there is no definitive evidence during Coleridge’s lifetime or for centuries after his death that Coleridge was acting as an anonymous translator of Bossey’s text as Faustus.