Keith-Smith, Brian
About the author: Brian Keith-Smith retired after 36 years teaching in Bristol University and research at Marbach. Senior Research Professor (Hon. D. Litt) for Mellen, he lives in Bristol and Carnac. He published monographs on Johannes Bobrowski and Lothar Schreyer, edited several volumes including the Encyclopedia of German Women Writers, and wrote numerous articles. He also lectures on art for NADFAS, with two tours in Australia in 2000, and reviews books for leading periodicals.
2002 0-7734-1364-21997 0-7734-8596-1Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8590-2Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8588-0Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8598-8Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8582-1Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8594-5Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8592-9Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8600-3Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8586-4Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1997 0-7734-8584-8Anthology with biographical and bibliographical notes, and portraits where obtainable. Writers have been represented by works that either reveal their development in one genre, or by a cross-section of works from different genres, or by a group of works on one topic. Occasionally a much longer work is included to highlight neglected or unknown areas. Notes and biographies in English, original texts in German.
1991 0-7734-1336-7Written by Bristol Germanists past and present, this volume includes eleven research essays. Included are: The Babenburg Dukes; Schnüffis' Mirantisches Flötlein; Collin's Regulus; Nestroy and the Redemptorists; Alcoholism in 19th-century drama; Stifter's Bunte Sleine; Duels in Schnitzler's plays; Hofmannsthal's quatrains; Hofmannsthal's Prolog zu dem Buch `Anatol'; a Kafka notebook entry; and Contemporary Women's Writing in Austria. It also has numerous illustrations and a special preface by Professor Emeritus August Closs. Bristol Austrian Studies will appeal to all advanced readers of Austrian literature. Its critical range and stimulating subject matter are a tribute to the sustained interest in Austrian culture that characterizes the teaching and research of Bristol University's German Department.
2003 0-7734-1376-6Written probably in the late 1940s, this novel (never before published) can be read as a sequel to Der Falkenschrei (Vol. 4). In the introduction, the editor summarizes literary versions of the Konradin legend and analyses the text to reveal the underlying themes and betrayal that governed the fate of this grandson of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Friedrich II. The struggle between successive Popes and Princes for the Kingdom of Sicily in the 13th and 14th centuries, Konradin’s wish to fulfill his grandfather’s plans, and the cruelty needed to secure power are all assessed. A psychological portrait is also built up of a young hero and almost Messiah-figure whose execution was seen as a martyrdom and sign of anti-Germanic forces eager for control over Southern Europe and the Church. This historical novel includes a series of episodes alternating between the would-be Emperor’s friends and the papal court. Dialogues and narrative sequences, formal speeches and dramatic events provide a rich texture that catches an essentially medieval atmosphere in which questions about the authority of the Empire and of the Church are raised.
2001 0-7734-1356-12001 0-7734-1358-81992 0-7734-1338-3This previously unpublished work by the Expressionist Lothar Schreyer was written during WWII, an example of literature of `inner emigration'. It was written as one of his spiritual exercises as a lay novice of the Abbey of Maria Laach. It includes a long general introduction about Schreyer's life and work by the author of a monograph on this writer and director of his archives in the Deutsches Lietaraturarchiv, Marbach. An introduction to the text follows. There are chapters on the German character of mysticism in the Alsace as an expression of medieval chivalry; on the Carthusian monastery in Straßburg; on the life of prayer of the nuns (above all the Dominicans, with astonishing details of their extreme practices); on the use of language by the Alsatian mystics; and on the meditative exegesis of the mystic way with major references to sermons and exhorations by Meister Eckehart. With an index and 24 illustrations. Lothar Schreyer Edition, Volume 1
2002 0-7734-1372-32004 0-7734-1335-9This previously unpublished novel, rediscovered by the author’s son, is a compelling account of the conflicts between city and church authorities in a 15th-century Italian state. The story also highlights the fate of an illegitimate girl born inside a convent, the grotesque behavior of a power-crazed abbess, the lack of confidence of the local bishop, the machinations of the mayor and other dignitaries, and the struggle between conscience and rational thinking of the city doctor. Schreyer also takes the opportunity to include a debate between traditional and forward-looking major artists, and to emphasize the misgivings of the Church faced with an epidemic of the plague. This historical extravaganza reveals Schreyer’s concerns at the end of WWII to redefine the role of the Church and to test various moral codes in an age characterized by uncertainty, cruelty and superstition.
1996 0-7734-1346-4Lothar Schreyer's dramas from the expressionist periodical Der Sturm are collected here for the first time together with twelve previously unpublished earlier works and eleven later dramas. The full extent of Schreyer's development as a dramatist can now be seen from derivative forms, including ancient myth, the Narcissus theme, naturalism and farce, through his experiments in expressionist language, to his later religious works. This collection, with its long introduction, is an essential tool for researchers into early 20th-century German drama.
Lothar Schreyer Edition, Volume 2
2002 0-7734-1368-52012 0-7734-3741-XNew insights are given on the background to staging
Tannhäuser and
Parsifal. Sections on the illustrations to and parodies of
Parsifal extend previous research, with special emphasis on the almost forgotten stage-designer Ludwig Sievert and early reception of the opera. The inclusion of a satirical text and Trevelyan’s parody reveal some of the less serious reception.
2006 0-7734-5531-0This extension of Volumes 11 (the autobiography
Wahrheit aus Morgenträumen) and 12 (
Briefe aus Rom) of the ‘Supplements to
An Encyclopedia of German Women Writers’ includes an extensive 100-page selection of Brun’s lyric poetry from her earliest lyrics with parallel examples from Matthisson, Baggesen and Goethe, most of her ballads, her songs for Greece and examples of her religious texts. Excerpts from her diaries, travelogues and leters, texts on the sculptor Thorwaldsen, her friend Madame de Staël and on her daughter Ida’s education reveal her important contacts and reflections on art and social conditions. Sections on her reception, dedications to her, and a 19th-century short biography are also included. The editor, whose articles on her works and manuscripts since 1985 have brought new insights into this neglected writer, provides a long introduction, a summary of her life and bibliography. This volume will appeal to all interested in 19th-century women writers and German literature in general.
2001 0-7734-7588-5This volume brings together contributions to research written during nearly forty years of service to Bristol University. Brian Coghlan writes an appreciative foreword, and the author narrates the background to his work. The broad scope of the essays is emphasized by a rich variety of illustrations.
2002 0-7734-1370-72002 0-7734-1370-7Included in this volume are 29 previously unpublished texts in mainly narrative prose, ranging from an art nouveau love story to Schreyer’s first attempt to evoke a major historical figure, to single page meditations and short stories. Aspects of his religious faith inform dialogues and texts closer to essay form. The collection shows how Schreyer experimented as a writer of prose before writing his major novels.
2006 0-7734-5533-7Louise Brachmann is an almost-forgotten Romantic figure, friend of Sidonie von Hardenberg, sister of the major 19th-century German writer Novalis. Schiller published some of her poems. Several of her family and friends died while she was still in her twenties, and she was forced to make a living by writing. Unhappy love affairs, poor reception of her work, and uncertainties in daily life led her eventually to drown herself. Her stories, poems, and death exemplify German Romanticism. Her sufferings were widely discussed together with her radical ideas about the role of women in society and support for Greek independence. This edition brings together works that are critical of Enlightenment views on nature, God, and death. It is an important reflection of the crisis of cultural values at the beginning of the 19th century, when established views on the family, the state and the power of reason were being questioned, and the editor provides a critical assessment of Brachmann’s importance within that context.
2003 0-7734-1378-2In the introduction, the editor analyses several of Schreyer’s cycles of poetry, including early works close to the traditions of ‘Jugendstil’ (art nouveau), religious cycles, and the long series of prose-poems Die menschliche Elegie that Schreyer recited in public after 1945. The texts are arranged as far as possible chronologically into published and previously unpublished sections. Several manuscripts cannot be dated, so a large collection of ‘Vermischte Gedichte’ is arranged thematically. For the most part these are the result of private reflection and reveal a sensitive, suffering and enquiring mind. These texts show years of experiments with poetic forms, and prove that the expressionist works by which he is best known during the Sturm-period formed only a small part of his overall output. Occasionally different versions are included that give interesting insights into a poet that was never satisfied with his writing.
1991 0-7734-1334-0These fourteen essays by a group of mainly British scholars include some of the latest findings in Büchner research. Essays include: Staging Büchner's plays; Coriolanus and Dantons Tod; Maria Stuart and Dantons Tod; Büchner and the `Sturm und Drang'; Büchner's School Orations; Tradition and Innovation in Leonce und Lena; Gardist Jünger and the Genesis of Woyzeck; The Reception of Büchner in lyric poetry; Büchner, Hauptmann and the Development of Tragic Realism in the 19th century; Sexual Politics in the work of Büchner and Wedekind; Büchner and Kasimir Edschmid; Büchner, Schneider and Lenz; Enzenberger's edition of Der Hessische Landbote; Büchner research: Problems and perspectives. An essential volume for all libraries and institutions where Büchner is read and studied, it is especially illuminating on cross-currents between Büchner's work and other writers and traditions.
1993 0-7734-1340-5These essays offer a wide range of topics treated from literary, interdisciplinary, and comparative points of view. The book falls into three sections: Weimar and Goethe; Weimar and German Literary Culture; Weimar Abroad; with a closure on Weimar and the Political Aftermath. Contributors to this volume are scholars from the United States, Canada, and Britain, including Christoph Schweitzer, Kenneth Weisinger, Wolfgang Wittkowski, Peter Skrine, Dennis Mahoney, and Frederick Burwick.
2006 0-7734-5529-9Hilde Stieler’s selected poems appeared in Volume 8 of
German Women Writers.
Monika Molander, first published in 1929, has been forgotten and difficult to access. The novel is republished here with an introduction that narrates the writer’s life, especially in exile in Sanary-sur-Mer, interprets two further poems, and analyzes the text as semi-autobiographical. Set mainly in Munich, it is the story of a young music student from an upper middle-class family in Bonn, whose vulnerability leads her to be swept off her feet by her Professor. Returning to Bonn after her father’s death, she finds eventual employment as an accompanist in a Zurich cabaret. Memories of life close to the theatre merge with grotesque scenes and uncertainties about life, with popular romantic views that come close to Kitsch. The colloquialism, characterizations, often light-hearted style and happy ending, produce a typically bittersweet account from the 1920s.
2000 0-7734-7551-6This volume presents 18 essays by specialists from German, Britain, Ireland and Australia on Goethe and Goethe-reception that reflect the wide variety of topics discussed at the conference ‘Goethes offene Tafel’ June 1999 at Windsor. There is an introduction by editor Heike Bartel, several illustrations, and each contribution has summaries in English and German. These papers open new lines of enquiry and brings reassessments of debts to Goethe by later writers.
2019 1-4955-0775-0Professor Brian Keith-Smith translated these poems from German from the Japanese poet Shizue Ogawa. He collects about 100 of Shizue's 300 poems.
2006 0-7734-5795-XThis book includes a remarkable mix of personal documents, most of them previously unpublished. The selection ranges from an early school essay, quotations from his dissertation, reminiscences of friends,
Der Stern (a series of privately circulated documents), extracts from diaries at the end of the Second World War, denazification documents, an autobiographical text, reflections on art and artists, aphorisms, his spiritual testament and a short obituary. This collection, partly available in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, is essential to an understanding of Schreyer’s eccentricity, naivety, productivity, obstinancy and openness to others. The previous nineteen volumes of the edition are given an extra dimension with this new view into his personal thoughts and life. The editor’s introduction places these in context and gives an account of collections of Schreyer’s letters (e.g., with Herwarth Walden, Maximilian Tischler, P. Theodor Bogler, the Herder publishing house, and the former Director of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Bernhard Zeller. Also included is a 130-page selection of Schreyer’s mainly unpublished letters that close this first collected edition of Schreyer’s works.
2002 0-7734-1366-9In Carthage AD 200, Perpetua, a young mother, and her slave Felicitas, are martyred for their Christian faith. Schreyer tells their story against the background of a regime whose days are numbered, propped up by observing the Roman imperial legal order and belief in pagan Gods.
2001 0-7734-1362-6The mainly dialogue form of Lothar Schreyer's unpublished novel as edited by Dr. Keith-Smith, reveals insights into the humor of human foibles, a central love story and continual references to animal and bird life, producing a work that is totally different from Schreyer's more serious historical novels. It reveals a caring quality in Schreyer's psyche that is generally thought to have developed after the Second World War through his efforts for the Christian charity 'Caritas'.
2006 0-7734-5771-2This book includes introductions and texts that show the writer’s developing understanding of his faith. The analyses of Jakob Böhme, German mystics and Meister Eckehart were essential to his visionary beliefs, without which the series of ‘Schau- und Lesebücher’ on Angels, the Holy Spirit, St. Elisabeth, the Mother of God, the Conqueror of Death and the Devil (including an extra dimension of Schreyer’s prayers), and his book on the Catechism cannot be fully appreciated. Inspired by the reform of the Roman Catholic Liturgy, they point towards theological insights of the Second Vatican Council. The final collection of discussions and reminiscences on Abstract Christian Art in 1962 emphasizes the role of dialogue as an exploratory form of education. Although it was not possible to include the illustrations and detailed comments on these that formed an integral part of the original publications, the introductory texts and selections by themselves reveal a process of active commitment and searching independence characteristic of Schreyer’s life and style. Some illustrations characteristic of his interests as a writer and artist are included, together with an introduction on the texts, and notes on the illustrations.
2024 1-4955-1250-9"This account of aspects of the development of German art from the Renaissance to the 1990s emphasizes recurring themes that have persisted into the twentieth century. Contrast in any German work of art can be explicit in its subject or form, or implicit in the way that a theme is treated. ...Emphasis on contrasts explains perhaps the German 'Gesamtkunstwerk' or total work of art--a phrase that is part of a German Romantic tradition where it is claimed that in every work of art, literature or music, its created should aim at a universal dimension." -Brian Keith-Smith
*This book includes 18 color prints.
2000 0-7734-1354-5Volume 3 of the Schreyer edition assembles for the first time all of the expressionist’s published essays on the theatre and includes his general moral tract Verantworthch (1922). Reactions to the repertoire and traditions of bourgeois theatre before the First World War precede accounts of the Berlin Sturm- and Hamburg Kampfbühne. His work at the Weimar Bauhaus and hopes for youth theatre in the 1920s and 1930s are recorded with post-1945 interpretations and reminiscences. Among the extensive unpublished documents are the two-volume Die Befreiung der Bühnenkunst (1916) analysing in detail the tasks of a director of theatre communities (an extension of earlier published statements), more on Schreyer’s productions, also his plans for a history of marionettes. This illustrated companion volume to his dramas includes a long introductory essay in German and is an essential research tool for scholars in 20th-centiury, expressionist theatre. In German.