[07/21/26] Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand: Footprints

Alma Classics, paperback

Translated by: Anthony Mortimer

Publication Date: July 21, 2026

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First English translation of the most important Swiss poet of the nineteenth century. Now presented in a dual-language edition

The most important Swiss poet of the nineteenth century, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer is regarded as a crucial figure in the transition of German-language poetry from the Romanticism of Heine, Novalis and Eichendorff to the Symbolism of Rilke and Stefan George.

In poems that took years and sometimes decades to reach a final version, he worked within a limited set of themes and images - high mountains, gloomy lakes, sinister boats, nocturnal ghosts, reflected clouds, dark woods, golden sunsets, lightning, harvesting, lost lovers - to present his own symbolic world with a vividness and intensity that few poets can match. In these sensitive and accurate versions by acclaimed translator Anthony Mortimer, Meyer's achievement is available to anglophone readers for the first time.