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Georg Lukacs was one of the most controversial Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century. In this book, however, he appears in another guise: as a literary historian in the tradition of Sainte-Beuve and Belinsky, offering an advanced introduction to one of the richest periods of European literature. These previously translated essays—on Heinrich von Kleist, Joseph Eichendorff, Georg Buchner, Heinrich Heine, Gottfried Keller, Wilhelm Raabe, and Theodor Fontane—were written between 1936 and 1950. They illuminate Lukacs's enduring love of German literature and his faith in the humanist tradition. In all of them, moreover, he can be seen actively intervening in the cultural debates of the time—on the role of literature, on the literary tradition in society, and on the relationship between literature and politics.