Brigitta, With Abdias, Limestone & The Forest Path

by Adalbert Stifter

Richly evocative and brushed with mystery...a wonderful new translation.--Publishers Weekly. ""A writer who portrayed the development of people, how they overcome antagonistic forces of family and nature and very often have to pay a great price until a certain serenity in life can be achieved, if at all...Edited very carefully...a pleasure to read.""--Choice. ""A chance to sample the works of a writer whom Thomas Mann once described as `one of the most remarkable, profound, secretly bold and strangely exciting story-tellers in world literature'. The selection itself is on the whole excellent.""--TLS. ""The new translation...will make the text accessible to those Women's Studies courses that discuss portrayals of gender.""--New German Studies.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literature, German Literature, 19th Century, Hungary

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1844

About the author

Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. He was especially notable for the vivid natural landscapes depicted in his writing, and has long been popular in the German-speaking world, while almost entirely unknown to English readers.

Reviews

[sasha ౨ৎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

un plot twist muy simple el de “brigitta” pero aún así no me lo esperaba.

[Mary Anne Meyering · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition I read was Rodale Press, 1957, beautifully illustrated by Peter Emmerich. Adalbert Stifter is a 19th century Austrian author who writes beautiful prose in a rather minimalist style. In the novella Brigitta he describes the natural world in a style rarely seen. I suppose I'm attracted to authors who have a tragic end (Joseph Roth, for one, who died an alcoholic in a pauper's hospital)--Stifter slit his own throat with a razor after suffering from cirrhosis of the liver.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as interesting to me as Theodor Storm's work. Abdias and Limestone were most congenial, the first with its greater sense of narration, the second with its amenable narrator and his subject. None of the four long stories is well served by the jacket copy, which for each seems to focus on a minor aspect of the story or to miscast its tone.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never cared much for German romaniticism. Still don't.

[Brendon Hamacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read Brigitta, once I finish the others a longer review will appear. Oh and Stifter is an amazing writer.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked The Forest Path.