In this thorough study of the figure of the hermit in the works of German writers Fitzell analyzes characters in works by Lessing, Goethe, Klinger, Hoffmann, Wieland, Eichendorff and others. The author argues that the figure of the hermit characterizes the quality of inwardness and withdrawal from society characteristic of German literature, and shows how this quality was represented in the age of Goethe.

Author Wilhelm Busch (18321908) was a prominent German caricaturist, painter, sculptor and poet. His satirical picture stories with rhymed texts earned him the honorary epithet of Grandfather of Comics. One of his first picture stories, Max and Moritz (1865), was an immediate success and has achieved the status of a popular classic and perennial bestseller. Max and Moritz, as well as many of Buschs other picture stories, are regarded as one of the primary precursors to the modern comic strip. Busch is also known for his poems, some of which are written in a satirical style similar to his picture stories, while others are of a deeper lyrical character. Translator John Fitzell (19232010) was a professor and chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Born in New York City, he earned his BA and PhD in German at Princeton University. He is the author of the monograph The Hermit in German Literature, from Lessing to Eichendorff (1961), as well as many articles on German literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A talented poet and translator, Dr. Fitzell coauthored a book of poems, Springwurzeln (1980), with his wife, Dr. Ilse Pracht Fitzell. Editor Alexander E. Pichugin was born in Engels, Russia, in 1972. He studied literature in Russia at Saratov State University and in Germany at Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg. He graduated with a PhD in German from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. He has authored numerous papers on German literature, cinema, and language pedagogy.

The first English-language study devoted to Hölderlin's novel in three decades, this book reveals Hyperion's literary and philosophical richness and its complex ties with politics, choreography, and economics.