Johann Christopher Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was, with Goëthe, the supreme dramatist and lyric poet of the great classical age of German literature. His plays include The Robbers, Don Carlos, Maria Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, and Wilhelm Tell. In this book T.J. Reed looks carefully at the image of Schiller as a serious and moralizing writer and finds in him a passion, subtlety and wit that make him a more complex and sympathetic personality than posterity has given him credit for.