f translations in book form has been treated
in the recent article by Wilkens already mentioned. He discusses
German drama, fiction, poetry, philosophy, theology and pedagogy, and
gives in an appendix "A List of the Translations of German Literature
that were printed in the United States before 1826." These books,
however, were not the first means of introducing German authors to
American readers. The first mention of this foreign literature we
find, as a rule, in the magazines. Here are numerous accounts of the
lives of German writers, criticism of their books, notices of editions
(English or American) and besides these, many translations of poetry
and the shorter prose works. These articles or translations do not, of
course, antedate the earliest appearance of the same works in England,
but it is safe to say that whatever information on German literature
was offered in the American magazines reached the American public
sooner than the copies of an English book sent over here to be sold.
Many readers learned to know foreign literature through the medium of
the periodicals who would not think of purchasing all the books, of
which they had read reviews or selections. This was especially true of
the poetry. The prose works were usually too long for republication in
the magazines and could be announced only through critiques or
abstracts. Even here, however, some of the longer pieces appeared,
such as _The Apparitionist_ (Schiller's _Geisterseher_) in the _N. Y.
Weekly Mag._, I-16, etc., 1795, N. Y., and in the same magazine II-4,
etc., Tschink's _Victim of Magical Delusion_, while _The Mirror of
Taste and Dramatic Censor_, I, 1810, contains _Emilia Galotti_,
translated by Miss Fanny Holcroft. These prose pieces, being long,
were continued from number to number, but for the poetry this was not
necessary. Poems of the size of Klopstock's _Messiah_ or Gessner's
_Death of Abel_ appeared in the magazines only in selections or
extracts, while on the other hand most of the lyric poems, being
short, could very easily be reprinted entire in translation. With
hardly an exception, the short poems of German authors appeared in
America in the periodicals some time before they were issued in book
form; for example, the earliest publication of Gessner's _Idyls_
mentioned by Wilkens was in 1802,[8] whereas single idyls had been
translated for the magazines in 1774, 1775, 1792, 1795, 1798, 1799,
two in 1793, three in 1796 and five in 1801.