Thomas Mann was only twenty-two years old when he began writing his first novel,
Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie[
Buddenbrooks: Decline of a Family], in October 1897. The work was completed in July of 1900 and published in October 1901. From the start Mann’s ambitions were set high. He wanted to write “a society novel disguised as a family saga” in the tradition of the great nineteenth-century European social novels, such as
Renée Mauperin(1864) by the Goncourt brothers, Stendhal’s
Le Rouge et le noir[
The Red and the Black,1830], and Theodor Fontanes
Die Poggenpuhls[
The Poggenpuhls,1896]. Furthermore, he wanted to surpass the literary fame of his older brother Heinrich, whose first novel
In einer Familie[
In a Family, 1894] was well-received and whose second novel about…
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Citation: Mundt, Hannelore G.. "Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 September 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11461, accessed 23 November 2024.]
