Writings
Although he developed a reputation as an imaginative and critical writer, he is famous chiefly as a biographer. He possessed a remarkable power of grouping facts so as to bring out their essential significance, and his style is distinguished for its strength, grace and purity. Among his principal works are:
- Goethe in den Zeugnissen der Mitlebenden (1824)
- Biographische Denkmäler (5 vols., 1824–30; 3rd ed., 1872)
- biographies of General von Seydlitz (1834), Field-Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, victor over Napoleon at Waterloo, Sophia Charlotte, queen of Prussia (1837), Field-Marshal Schwerin (1841), Field-Marshal Keith (1844), and General Bülow von Dennewitz (1853).
His Denkwürdigkeiten und vermischte Schriften appeared in 9 volumes in 1843-59, the two last volumes appearing after his death. His niece, Ludmilla Assing, between 1860 and 1867, edited several volumes of his correspondence with eminent men, and his Tagebücher (14 vols., 1861–70). Blätter aus der preussischen Geschichte appeared in 5 vols. (1868–69); his correspondence with his wife, Rahel, appeared in 6 vols. in 1874–75; and that with Carlyle in 1892.
His selected writings appeared in 19 volumes in 1871-76.
Read more about this topic: Karl August Varnhagen Von Ense
Famous quotes containing the word writings:
“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)
“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)