Book coverJust a brief note to record that the last book sent to press in MHRA's first century is also the first to be published in its second century: Francis Lamport's masterly translation of Goethe, The Natural Daughter; Schiller, The Bride of Messina, volume 13 in our New Translations series.

The cover shows the celebrated Weimar monument to the dynamic duo, which was copied across the world: they get a little more sunshine in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, which is the only one I've seen myself. It's easy to forget what a touchstone of identity the figures of Goethe and Schiller were for German emigrants to the USA: when the San Francisco copy was raised, in August 1901, thirty thousand people came to the unveiling. Golden Gate Park also has a statue to Cervantes — plonked down right next to Goethe and Schiller, only a few years later, by a rival committee for Spanish Americans — and others to Beethoven, Roald Amundsen, and Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner.


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