Faust, Part 1 (Translated by Anna Swanwick with an Introduction by F. H. Hedge)

Considered by many as Johann Goethe’s magnum opus, “Faust” has a peculiar history of composition and publication. What began as a project in Goethe’s youth, at the age of twenty, in 1769, “Faust” would not fully be completed until 1831 very near the end of the author’s life. Based on the German legend of Johann Georg Faust, a magician of the German Renaissance who reportedly gained his mystical powers by selling his immortal soul to the devil, the Faustian legend has forever come to symbolize…