The Ghost-Seer

Schiller’s enigmatic novel fragment, his most popular work when it was first published, appears in print again with a new critical introduction by Professor Jeffrey L. Sammons. One of Schiller’s most fascinating prose works, whosehistoric and philosophical implications have still to be plumbed by literary critics, The Ghost-Seer, with its exotic Venetian setting, remains an interesting, highly readable work. It is in a certain sense the German equivalent of Dickens’s Mystery of Edwin Drood. It also illustrates excellently what has been termed the shadow side of the European Enlightenment, a fascination with the occult that is clearly at odds with a naive understanding of the Enlightenment as the Age of Voltaire. Sammons’s introduction sheds new light on the work in connection with Schiller’s life and poetic development, and of the fame of the work in Germany and in the English-speaking countries. A must for every research library and for Schiller collections.