History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus: Together with the Second Report of Faustus, Containing His Appearances and the Deeds of Wagner

by Anonymous, William Rose (Editor)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Fiction

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1592

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Ioan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, suffice it to say I am and was disappointed. I had to wade through all the real life references to a doctor faustus who proclaimed his abilities in the dark magic, sometimes scoffed at, other times the opposite, which was interesting. The beginning is just repetitious warnings for “good christians” against the evil and temptations of the devil, and all devilish arts; followed by a multitude of questions from Faust which are all to the same purpose, but phrased differently. Then eventually you get some rather amusing unconnected stories, then some more warnings during his downfall.
The second book, telling of his adopted son, was pure bollocks. It appeared to attempt to ‘mend’ the episodic nature of the first, which wasn’t needed, and ended up in some peculiarly disjointed narrative. The language seemed crap, though it’s hard to know when much older english, but I understood the first book perfectly well, so I maintain it was nonsense. Then finally there was a crappy poem.
All in all, I’d recommend reading the interesting preamble, him actually selling his soul, one response to his questions about hell, skipping to some of the fun stories, then stopping.

[Bình Huỳnh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Version:

This is the best English version, easy to read. Quality read. I read this for free on Glutenberg.

Personal opinion about the book and author:

When you live in the strict world in the 1500s your imagination and creativity restrained by the Church teaching, yet this book is both questioning the dogma and yet appeal to it which seem really funny to me.

The content:

Creativity: 10/10
Structure: 9/10
Wording: 9/10
Consitent: 5/10 ( just like every fiction work at the time )

Overall:

recommended. 5 stars

[Keith]

This edition is strictly for the scholars. The prose is of the difficult late-Medieval sort, with lots of interminable run-on sentences, archaic terminology, and (by modern standards) distorted grammar that is hard to follow. That said, it clearly shows the origin of the Faust tale later adapted more masterfully by Marlowe in Elizabethan theatrical English and Goethe in poetic German.

The Wagner section, however, I felt to be an even bigger disappointment. The first half picks up the story from the death of his master Faustus, but the Wagner character seems decided flatter than even the bit-role he had in the previous work, despite his ostensible position here as protagonist. In fact, he hardly counts at all. The latter half is given over almost entirely to a description of the Saracens siege of Vienna, in which Wagner, Faustus, Mephistopheles and Ackercoke all have minor mostly comedic roles and which almost certainly never happened. It certainly has little to do with the grander themes of Faust.

So, unless you are making a particular study of the Faust myth, I believe you can safely give this one a miss.

[Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is the precursor of a great list of works about Faustus: the mortal who made a deal with the devil. It's an inspiring tale about the advantages and consequences of taking the Devil as an ally. This Faust is an individual who sought the ultimate knowledge, but who only found and worked in deceit. It's relevant to the 16th century because science as the work of the devil was portrayed as that knowledge obtained by dealing with the devil rather than Godly ways.