Faust

A scholar who has read everything and knows nothing worth knowing signs his soul away for one moment worth holding on to — and Mephistopheles takes him from the study to the witches' kitchen, the drinking cellar and the Walpurgis Night, and to Margaret, who pays for the bargain. Goethe began Faust in his twenties and published the first part at fifty-eight, carrying it with him through a whole working life. Bayard Taylor's translation keeps the original metres — the rhyme and the rough comedy that prose versions lose — and Harry Clarke's drawings of 1925 are the strangest ever made for it. Its 144 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.