Andrea Wulf's Blog, page 5

Telegraph, Best of 2022: "Magnificent Rebels"

And another Best Books pick ... this one in the Telegraph "Best Biographies of 2022": "Andrea Wulf���s ���Magnificent Rebels��� resurrects the ���Jena Set��� ��� Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, Nov��alis ��� who breathed romance back into nature after the Enlightenment had reduced it to ���a monotonous machine���. They invented our modern obsession with ���self���, yet in Britain are barely known compared with their avowed disciples, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth et al. In Wulf���s page-turner, the Germans are as badly behaved as the later Bloomsberries, and surprisingly likeable: ���My novel is like a stocking someone knits away at so slowly it gets grubby,��� complains Goethe.

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And again in Best Books of 2022

Download Telegraph Best Books 2022

Telegraph, Best Biographies of 2022: "Magnificent Rebels"

And another Best Books pick ... this one in the Telegraph: "Andrea Wulf���s ���Magnificent Rebels��� resurrects the ���Jena Set��� ��� Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, Nov��alis ��� who breathed romance back into nature after the Enlightenment had reduced it to ���a monotonous machine���. They invented our modern obsession with ���self���, yet in Britain are barely known compared with their avowed disciples, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth et al. In Wulf���s page-turner, the Germans are as badly behaved as the later Bloomsberries, and surprisingly likeable: ���My novel is like a stocking someone knits away at so slowly it gets grubby,��� complains Goethe.

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Times Literary Supplement: Best Books of 2022 - "Magnificent Rebels"

And some more Best Books of 2022 mentioning "Magnificent Rebels":

���I was knocked out by Andrea Wulf���s "Magnificent Rebels���. It���s not about the Romantics you might expect: these are the German ones, who congregated in the little town of Jena at the tail end of the eighteenth century. It compasses Fichte, Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, Schelling, Novalis and a brace of von Humboldts ��� as well as the brilliant womenfolk whose roles in their intellectual careers have, as usual, been downplayed by history. Wulf has had the luck to hit on a vital (and, to most anglophones, sketchily known) bit of intellectual history that is also a cauldron of fantastic gossip. Feuds, hero worship, doomed love, rampant adultery and stinky book reviews: it���s all here. It���ll remind you of a TLS party" - Sam Leith, TLS

"Andrea Wulf explores the birth of self-consciousness, self- obsession and self-interest. The self was invented, she argues, between 1794 and 1804 in Jena, a small German university town in which everyone hated everyone else and did what they could to derail each other���s careers. Nothing new there, then. Ignited by Fichte���s lectures on the ���Ich���, the proponents of selfishness included Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, Novalis and the Schelling brothers. The brilliance of Wulf���s approach lies in her depiction of cock-of-the- walk egotism; a wife, for example, was expected to submit her own Ich to that" - Frances Wilson, TLS

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New Statesman: Best Books of the Year 2022 - "Magnificent Rebels"

"Magnificent Rebels" is on New Statesman list for Best Books of the Year 2022. Picked thrice:

Henry Marsh: Andrea Wulf's "Magnificent Rebels" is about the German Romantic writers such as Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, Goethe, Caroline B��hmer and many others in Jena at the turn of the 19th century, was a pure joy to read. A seemingly more innocent and optimistic age than ours, despite the Napoleonic wars, autocratic governments and terrible child mortality.

Sue Prideaux: "We���re familiar with the sexual and intellectual musical chairs of the Lake Poets and the Bloomsbury lot; in Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self (John Murray) by Andrea Wulf we encounter their German forerunner. Wulf���s rebels are the ���Jena set��� of the 1790s. Caroline Bo��hmer is the female disrupter, Goethe is the giant dominating the lesser intellects, and the philosopher Schelling presaged environmentalism. All were inspired by the French Revolution and idealised Napoleon. This is a clever, enlightening and thoroughly entertaining book"

Jeremy Cliffe: "Around the turn of the 19th century a cluster of thinkers, writers and scientists formed in the small German university town of Jena and laid the foundations of the modern world. It is a bold thesis. But Andrea Wulf asserts it convincingly in Magnificent Rebels (John Murray), an utterly absorbing account ranging from high philosophical theory to mischievously profane stories of ideas, love and ambition in Napoleonic Europe. Through an interwoven series of portraits Wulf shows how Enlightenment rationalism evolved into Romanticism, and thus produced the Western sense of self that defines much about our lives to this day"

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The Guardian: Top 10 Books about unlikely revolutionaries

I drew up my favourite 10 books about unlikely revolutionaries for The Guardian including poets, writers and artists who used pens and brushes for their revolutions. 

click here for the article

3Sat "Kulturzeit" & ZDF Morgenmagazin: Review and Interview "Fabelhafte Rebellen"

3Sat "Kulturzeit did a proper TV report about 'Fabelhafte Rebellen' including actors speaking lines from the book (and an interview with me).

The report comes 30min into the programme: click here 

And here is a shorter 2min interview in ZDF Morgenmagazin click here

3Sat "Kulturzeit": Review and Interview "Fabelhafte Rebellen"

3Sat "Kulturzeit did a proper TV report about 'Fabelhafte Rebellen' including actors speaking lines from the book (and an interview with me).

The report comes 30min into the programme: click here 

History Today: Review "Magnificent Rebels"

And a lovely review in History Today

���Drawn from meticulously detailed research in diaries, correspondence and literary works, Wulf weaves the stories of these individuals together, showing (sometimes exactly ��� there are maps) where their paths crossed and how these individuals rubbed off on each other ��� Magnificent Rebels is an engaging introduction to the historical background, philosophical novelties and dramatis personae of the early Romantic movement, yet it also offers something new to those more familiar with it ��� It is details such as this that bring Wulf���s story of the ���Jena Set��� ��� their lives and legacy ��� so vividly to life.��� ��� History Today

click here for full review

Spectator "Books of the Year 2022": Magnificent Rebels

Peter Frankopan chose "Magnificent Rebels" as one of his Books of the Year in The Spectator.

"I also greatly admired Andrea Wulf���s Magnificent Rebels, about the intellectual powerhouse of Jena that exploded like a firework in the late 1790s. History writing at its best"

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Next Big Idea Club: "Magnificent Rebels"

The Next Big Idea Club asked me to share 5 insights from "Magnificent Rebels" ... click here to learn about "The Magic of Working Together" or "The Importance of Art" amongst others.