LOVE ACROSS THE DIVIDE
KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.
The Constant Lover, or William and Jeanette: a Tale, from the German … To which is prefixed an Account of the Literary Life of the Author …
London, John Bell, 1799.
Two vols, pp. I: [iii]-xxvii, [1 (blank)], 288; II: iv, 302, wanting a half-title in vol. I if required; marginal wormtrack to front endpapers and first four leaves of vol. I, else a very good copy in contemporary half calf and marbled bards, joints a little rubbed, labels chipped; Downshire monogram to head of spine.
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The Constant Lover, or William and Jeanette: a Tale, from the German … To which is prefixed an Account of the Literary Life of the Author …
First edition in English, rare, of ‘Geprüfte Liebe’, a romance first published in Kotzebue’s Die jüngsten Kinder meiner Laune (1793–7), and then published separately in 1799, prefaced here by a summary translation of his literary autobiography.
‘A book more completely amusing we have seldom perused’, enthused the Critical Review of this tale of two socially mismatched lovers, set in part during the French Revolution. The interesting prefatory autobiography describes the early influence of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe, pushed aside when Kotzebue first saw Klopstock’s Death of Adam on the Weimar stage; a childhood encounter with Goethe; his first attempts at publication; the works he wrote in Russia in the 1780s; and his growing success with plays and novels.
The German playwright, novelist, and diplomat August von Kotzebue (1761–1819) had a brief but intense period of popularity in England that was kick-started by Lovers’ Vows, an adaptation by Elizabeth Inchbald, and cemented by the hugely popular The Stranger (both 1798). Over 200 editions of his works appeared in English in the next three years, mostly plays – his prose fiction is much scarcer: Raven et al. list only seven titles, of one of which there are no extant copies.
The Constant Lover was reprinted within the year in Dublin, New York and Boston, but the London first edition of this anonymous translation is now very uncommon. ESTC records five copies only: Bristol, British Library, Longleat; Harvard, and UCLA. Library Hub and OCLC find no further copies.
ESTC T135703; Raven and Forster 1799: 58.
