Brecht in English

Digital Bibliography

If you are wondering whether texts by Brecht have been translated into English or whether there are multiple English translations, check:

Brecht's Works in English: A Bibliography
With over 4200 entries you can identify Brecht's plays, poems, songs, stories, or essays in English translation:

https://brechtguide.library.wisc.edu/

 

Performance Rights

Questions about English-language performance rights of Brecht's plays? Click here.

 

Brecht in English Translation

The list below includes most of the Brecht volumes currently available in English translation. For additional out-of-print translations and editions, see the bibliographies in The Cambridge Companion to Brecht, ed. by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks (Cambridge University Press, 2nd revised ed., 2006), pp. 288-90, or A Bertolt Brecht Reference Companion, ed. by Siegfried Mews (Greenwood Press, 1997), pp. 399-402.

For a very out-of-date, 2001 table comparing various translations of Brecht’s works in English, click here:

http://members.tripod.com/~go20ccm/bine03021999.html#SamuelFrench

Brecht’s works in English translation were published until 2006 mainly by Methuen Publishing Ltd. These editions plus new ones are now available from Bloomsbury Publishing:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/search/?q=brecht

Bloomsbury offers single-play editions as well as the Collected Works of Brecht, as follows:

Vol. 1 (Baal, Drums in the Night, In the Jungle of Cities, The Life of Edward II of England, and five one-act plays)

Vol. 2 (Man Equals Man, The Elephant Calf, The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Seven Deadly Sins)

Vol. 3 (St. Joan of the Stockyards, Lindbergh's Flight, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, He Said Yes / He Said No, The Decision, The Exception and the Rule, The Horatians and the Curiations, The Mother)

Vol. 4 (Round Heads and Pointed Heads, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, Senora Carrar's Rifles, Dansen, How Much is Your Iron? The Trial of Lucullus)

Vol. 5 (Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children)

Vol. 6 (The Good Person of Szechwan, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Mr Puntila and His Man Matti)

Vol. 7 (The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweyk in the Second World War, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Duchess of Malfi)

Vol. 8 (Antigone, The Days of the Commune, Turandot)

The Berliner Ensemble Adaptations (The Tutor, Coriolanus, The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431, Don Juan, Trumpets and Drums)

Brecht and the Writer's Workshop: Fatzer and Other Dramatic Projects. Ed. by Tom Kuhn and Charlotte Ryland, trans. by Kuhn, Ryland, Phoebe von Held, Matthias Rothe, Markus Wessendorf, Marc Silberman and Victoria Hill (includes the fragment plays Fleischhacker, Fatzer, The Bread Store, The Real Life of Jacob Trotalong, The Judith of Shimoda, Garbe / Büsching)

 

The DramaOnline website, maintained by Bloomsbury Publishing, lists over 40 editions of Brecht plays available for purchase and download:

http://dramaonlinelibrary.com/playwrights/bertolt-brecht-iid-12335

Other volumes of works by Brecht published by Bloomsbury-Methuen:

· Refugee Conversations. Trans. by Romy Fursland, ed. and intro. by Tom Kuhn (2019)

· Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things. Ed. and trans. by Antony Tatlow (2016)

· Brecht on Theatre. Ed. and trans. by Marc Silberman, Steve Giles, and Tom Kuhn, 3rd, rev. edition (2015)

· Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks. Ed. and trans. by Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles, and Marc Silberman (2014)

· Brecht on Art and Politics. Ed. by Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles (2003)

· Brecht on Film and Radio. Ed. and trans. by  Marc Silberman. (2001)

· Collected Short Stories. Ed. by John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Intro. by Marc Silberman (2015)

· The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar. Trans. by Charles Osborne, ed. by Tom Kuhn (2016)

· Poems 1913-1956, Ed. by John Willett and Ralph Manheim. (out of print)

· Poems and Songs from the Plays, trans. and ed. by John Willett. (171 poems not included in Poems 1913-1956; out of print)

· Bad Time for Poetry, ed. John Willett. (out of print)

· Journals 1934-1955. Trans. by Hugh Rorrison. Ed. by John Willett.

· Letters 1913-1956. Trans. by Ralph Manheim. Ed. by John Willett. (out of print)

· Diaries 1920-1922. Ed. by Hertha Ramthun. (out of print)

· Mother Courage and Her Children (the National Theatre version, 1995, by David Hare)

· Mother Courage and Her Children, translated by Michael Hofmann (2006)

· Mother Courage and Her Children, translated by Tony Kushner (2009)

· The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, translated by George Tabori, revised by Alastaire Beaton (2013)

· The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, translated by Jennifer Wise (2013)

· The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, translated by Bruce Norris (2017)

· Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Ed. and trans. Steve Giles (2007)

· Bertolt Becht. Poetry and Prose. Ed. by R. Grimm and C. Molina y Vedia. [includes 42 German/English poetry selections and two Tales from the Calendar ("Socrates Wounded," "The Unseemly Old Lady"); all translations from the Methuen Brecht edition]

 

Arcade Publishing in the United States issued individual volumes from the Methuen series. The publisher went bankrupt in 2009. Some may be available as used books.

Available from W. W. Norton:
· The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, Trans. by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn. New York and London: Liveright Publishing, 2018)

· Love Poems. Trans. by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn. New York and London: Liveright Publishing, 2014. (http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Love-Poems/)

 

Available from City Lights (http://www.citylights.com)

· Bertolt Brecht. The Stories of Mr. Keuner. Translated by Martin Chalmers. San Francisco: City Lights, 2001.

Grove Atlantic publishes the following translations of Brecht plays under the editorship of Eric Bentley (http://www.groveatlantic.com), search "Brecht":

· Three Plays: Baal, A Man’s a Man, The Elephant Calf. Translated by Eric Bentley.

· Edward II. Translated by Eric Bentley.

· Galileo. Translated by Charles Laughton.

· The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays (Three scenes from Fear and Misery of the Third Reich: The Jewish Wife, In Search of Justice, The Informer; The Measures Taken, The Exception and the Rule, Salzburg Dance of Death, What Was He Killed For?). Translated by Eric Bentley.

· Jungle of the Cities and Other Plays (includes also Drums in the Night and Roundheads and Peakheads). Translated by Anselm Hollo and Frank Jones.

· Manual of Piety [poems].

· Mother Courage and Her Children . Translated by Eric Bentley.

· The Mother. Translated by Lee Baxandall.

· Nine Plays of the Modern Theatre (includes The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Translated by Eric Bentley).

· The Threepenny Opera. Translated by Bentley and Desmond Vesey.

 

University of Minnesota Press published two Brecht plays in the original (1948) translations of Eric Bentley (http://www.upress.umn.edu):

· The Good Woman of Setzuan

· The Caucasian Chalk Circle

 

Penguin Classics (USA) published three of the Willett-Manheim translations from the Methuen series, now out of print.

Good Person of Szechwan

The Threepenny Opera

Life of Galileo