When the Berlin publisher August Mylius agreed to pay an advance for the young Goethe's morally unconventional drama
Stella- agreed to buy a pig in a poke, as he put it - he did so, as he wrote to Johann Heinrich Merck on 24 October 1775, not because he expected a profit from “such a slight piece” but “mainly in order to make the acquaintance of this admittedly extraordinary genius.”
Stella, which appeared in Berlin book stores in January 1776, has been called a “companion piece” to The Sufferings of Young Werther, published in 1774, except that the love triangle is turned around: one man between two women this time. In Stella, the play's eponymous heroine is about to take into her employ the daughter of Cecilia, who is known as Madame Sommer until she and her long absent
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Citation: Dye, Ellis. "Stella". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21839, accessed 21 November 2024.]
