Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a German poet, novelist and philosopher who became an eminent figure in the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This book, which was first published in 1875, takes its focal text from the first three books of his Knabenjahre (autobiography). It was originally arranged and edited by the late Dr W. Wagner, with this second edition being prepared in 1890 by J. W. Cartmell of Christ's College, Cambridge. Although the text itself appears in its original German, meticulous notes from both editors make Goethe's Boyhood endlessly accessible to students of German language and literature. The editors have also provided a detailed family tree of the writer and thinker to give this rich and engaging text a useful contextual background.