Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German, Signed Limited Edition of Faust. This is Goethe’s Faust, a signed limited edition illustrated by Harry Clarke and translated from the German of John Anster. Faust was originally published in German, it is a tragic play written in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and considered by many to be the greatest work of German literature. The first appearance of the work in print was published in 1790. In 1806, Goethe completed a preliminary version of what is now known as Part One; it was published in 1808, and he finished writing Faust, Part Two in 1831, a year before his death. The play is based on the medieval legend of a man who sold his soul to the devil, and Faust is like the one in the legend. He is highly successful, yet dissatisfied with life, which leads him to make a deal with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. In Part One, which takes place in Heaven, Mephistopheles (Satan) makes a bet with God that he can lure God's favorite human - Faust - away from righteous pursuits, and the story goes on from there. Faust was just trying to learn everything that could be known, and he paid a price for it. 

Size: 10 3/4 X 8 1/2 in. 

#6491 . 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in German history. His works have had a profound influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day. He was a poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, and theatre director, and his most notable work is probably Faust. (A polymath is someone who knows or wants to know everything.) 

The book is 1/4 bound, with a vellum spine decorated with gilt lettering, gray boards, hauntingly decorated endpapers, the limitation page says there were 1000 copies printed to  be sold in Great Britain and 1000 copies printed for America, this is No. 591 of the American copies that were printed, it is signed by Harry Clarke, who illustrated the book, and It has the bookplate of William M. Conselman on the limitation page. It has a full- page color frontis and  a decorated title page, the title page says it is from the German by John Anster, and it was published by Dingwall Rock Limited in New York; the book is undated, but it was published     in 1925, according to WorldCat, and it was printed in Great Britain by Walter Lewis at the University Press in Cambridge. It also has a five-page Preface (7 - 11), a list of Illustrations on 13 and 14, with 21 illustrations altogether (13 black-and-white and 8 in color) and numerous black-and-white vignettes, there are 254 pages of text and one vignette after the last page of text, and the top edge is gilt.  

Harry Clarke (1889 - 1931) was an Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator, and a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement. His first printed work was Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, followed by illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and his works in Faust were spectacularly haunting. 

John Anster (1793 - 1867) was a poet and professor who taught at Trinity College in Dublin, and he published fragments of a translation of Goethe’s Faust in 1820 that were later reprinted in England and America. 

William Marien Conselman (1896 - 1940) was an American screenwriter who also wrote newspaper comic strips under his Bill Conselman byline and sometimes under the pseudonym Frank Smiley. 

The book measures 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 and is in very good condition, with a good binding, clean pages and text, and beautiful illustrations, just a tad of soiling on the heel and crown of the spine, a dark spot on the front cover, and overall a very good copy of this limited edition of Goethe’s Faust. There are only eight copies that we found online on the rare book website we just, and they range in price from $600 to $1500.