author
Allen Wilson Porterfield
1877–1952
A scholar of German literature and a translator, he wrote clear, early-20th-century studies of Romanticism and helped bring German works to English-language readers.
1 Audiobook
Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei From "Modern Philology" vol. 13 (1915)
by Allen Wilson Porterfield
About the author
Born in 1877 or 1878 and dying in 1952, Allen Wilson Porterfield is remembered as an American educator, author, and translator with a strong focus on German literature. Surviving catalog and library records consistently connect him with academic writing on German Romanticism and related literary subjects.
His best-known works include An Outline of German Romanticism, 1766-1866, Karl Lebrecht Immermann: A Study in German Romanticism, and Poets as Heroes of Epic and Dramatic Works in German Literature. He also translated German writing, including works by Jakob Wassermann and Walter Julius Bloem, suggesting a career spent both studying literature closely and making it more accessible to new readers.
The available public record on his personal life is fairly sparse, but his bibliography shows a writer deeply engaged with nineteenth-century German thought, poetry, and criticism. For readers interested in literary history, his books offer a window into how German Romanticism was interpreted by an English-language scholar of his time.