Happiest of birthday to these two writers today, August 28th.

First up is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (b. 1749). While often remembered today for his Faust (the first literary work I read in German), I was particularly drawn to his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. I’m enraptured by epistolary novels and a lover of the Romantic movement and its precedents. The beauty of the book was its story, so well told by a young writer. Even if I didn’t always like Werther as a person, I wanted to know what he thought and how his story unfolded.

Second, J. Sheridan Le Fanu (b. 1814), an Irish writer who is mostly known today for being the writer of Carmilla, an early Gothic vampire novella. I read that first but was more taken with the collection in which it was included, “In a Glass Darkly.” That work contained 3 short stories and 2 novellas. I loved “Green Tea”, “The Familiar”, “The Room in the Dragon Volant”, and “Carmilla”. Well worth dipping in to this collection.