Krook's spontaneous combustion is exquisite
novels.
During the last seventy years German
publishers do not seem to have encouraged
talented young writers to bring out a new
translation of Dickens' works which would
adequately render his literary qualities.
Instead, they put up with second-rate
modern translations or have recourse to
revised nineteenth-century versions. The
fact that the number of those Germans
who, in order to grasp the full meaning of
Dickens' works and to imbibe the sub
tleties of his style, prefer to read him in
the original, has considerably increased,
may have deterred publishers to take the
financial risk of bringing out a really
satisfactory modern translation. But the
publishers' reticense also seems to mirror
the decline of Dickens' popularity in Ger
many since World War I.
But Dickens' works were not only transla
ted, they were also analyzed and imitated:
Dickens' Household Words inspired Karl
Gutzkow to publish a periodical in a simi
lar style - Unterhaltungen am hauslichen
Herd (Conversations at the Homely He
arth) - in 1852. Otto Ludwig, a Dickens
critic of great penetration imitated the
English writer in his own creative works,
in his novel Zwischen Himmel und Erde
(Between Heaven and Earth) (1856) and
the story Die Heiterethei (1857) and its
sequel A us dem regen in die Traufe (Out of
the Ftying-Pan into the Fire) (1857).
The same could be said of various other
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