Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), considered by some to be the greatest German writer, employed a number of sophisticated strategies in his dealings with publishers. None of them is as intriguing as the one appearing in Goethe's letter, dated January 16, 1797, to the publisher Vieweg...

In 1797 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sold a manuscript through a second-price auction. We investigate Goethe's motivation in the context of the late eighteenth century's book market and relate it to modern auction theory