The Simplicissimus Project

H.J.C von Grimmelshausen, The Adventurous Simplicissimus, trans. A.T.S. Goodrick (London: Heinemann, 1912). With additional explanatory footnotes by the students of History 315.

The following e-text is the collaborative work of the students enrolled in History 315, "Europe in the Age of Absolutism, 1648-1789," at The College of William and Mary (Spring 2002). Each of the 35 students has taken an excerpt from A. T. S. Goodrick's 1912 translation of Grimmelshausen's seventeenth-century German classic, The Adventurous Simplicissimus [originally titled Der Abentheurliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (1669)], transferred the text to an html file and added at least five explanatory footnotes. As far as I know, this is the first nearly complete English-language version of Simplicissimus on the Internet (Goodrick himself expurgated a few chapters he considered irrelevant or obscene, so his version was also incomplete). Special thanks go to Rob Nelson, the IT liaison for the Lyon Gardiner Tyler Department of History, and to his colleagues at IT, whose technical skill and creativity made this collaborative project possible.

Ronald Schechter

Below are links to individual chapters of Grimmelshausen's The Adventurous Simplicissimus. You can search the entire text using the following searchbox.

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Please note, you can search for two words in the same chapter by placing "AND" between them. You can also search using "OR"; if you don't use those conjunctions, the search engine will search for that exact phrase.

Book I, chs. i-v.
Book I, chs. vi-x.
Book I, chs. xi-xiv.
Book I, chs. xv-xix.
Book I, chs. xx-xxiii.
Book I, chs. xxiv-xxvi.
Book I, chs. xxvii-xxxii.
Book II, chs. i-v.
Book II, chs. vi-ix.
Book II, chs. x-xii.
Book II, chs. xiii-xvi.
Book II, chs. xvii-xix.
Book II, chs. xx-xxii.
Book II, chs. xxiii-xxvi.
Book II, chs. xxvii-xxix.
Book II, chs. xxx-xxxi.
Book III, chs. i-iii.
Book III, chs. iv-vii.
Book III, chs. viii-x.
Book III, chs. xi.-xiii.
Book III, chs. xiv-xvii.
Book III, chs. xviii-xxi.
Book III, chs. xxii-xxiv.
Book IV, chs. i-iii.
Book IV, chs. iv-vii.
Book IV, chs. viii-x.
Book IV, chs. xi-xiii.
Book IV, chs. xiv-xvii.
Book IV, chs. xviii-xxi.
Book IV, chs. xxii-xxiv.
Book V, chs. i-iv.
Book V, chs. v-vii.
Book V, chs. viii-xi.
Book V, chs. xii-xix.
Book V, chs. xx-xxiii.
Book V, ch.xxiv.