The literary work which Goethe produced and stimulated in his Weimar years - the greater part of his life - gave to a country which was not yet a nation the centre of artistic and intellectual authority it lacked. T. J. Reed's study traces the way this came about, against what social and politcal difficulties and literary opposition, and places the results in the larger context of German cultural history. The historical narrative is built up from a precise analysis of the major (and many minor) texts of the period, and weaves individual writers' careers persuasively into the broader pattern.