Nicholas Delius
* 19.09.1813 in Bremen; ✝ 18.11.1888 in Bonn
Scholar
Biography

Delius enjoys the reputation of being one of the most significant English specialists and Shakespeare researchers of the nineteenth century. Having completed his degree in English, Romance and Oriental Languages, Delius taught from 1846 onwards at Bonn, where he founded one of the first departments of English in 1885. He was active on behalf of the governing board of the German Shakespeare Society and went on, between 1879 and 1884, to be its President, after which he was nominated Honorary President.
Delius is best known for his collected edition of the complete works of Shakespeare (Shakspere’s Werke), which appeared in numerous individual volumes between 1854 and 1861, and after 1872 in a two-volume revised edition. In it, Delius complemented the original English text with an exhaustive German commentary; he also made an essential contribution to Shakespeare’s being read and understood in Germany not only in translation but also in English. Numerous English editions of Shakespeare, for example the Leopold Shakspere edited by Furnivall (London, Paris and New York), are based on Delius’ version of the text and his commentary. Some of his many contributions to the Shakespeare Jahrbuch were published in a collected edition in 1887 under the title Abhandlungen zu Shakespeare.
Treatises
- Die Tieck’sche Shaksperekritik. Bonn, 1846.
- Der Mythus von William Shakspere. Eine Kritik der Shakspere’schen Biographie. Bonn, 1851.
- Shakspere-Lexikon. Ein Handbuch zum Studium der Shaksperischen Schauspiele. Bonn, 1852.
- J. Payne Colliers alte handschriftliche Emendationen zum Shakspere. Bonn, 1853.
- Ueber das englische Theaterwesen zu Shakspere’s Zeit. Ein Vortrag gehalten in Bonn am 21. Januar und in Köln am 17. März 1853. Bremen, 1853.
- Abhandlungen zu Shakspere. Elberfeld, 1878.
Literature
Primary Literature
- Shakspere’s Werke. 7 Bde. Elberfeld, 1854-1861. 3rd revised ed. 2 vols. Elberfeld, 1872.
Secondary Literature
- Englisches Seminar Bonn (ed.): In memoriam Nicolaus Delius. Bonn, 1989.
- Hiltscher, Michael: „Nicolaus Delius (1813-1888)“, Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West, Jahrbuch (1989). Pp. 387-397.
- Hiltscher, Michael: Shakespeares Text in Deutschland: Textkritik und Kanonfrage von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt a. M., 1993.
- In Memoriam Nicolaus Delius. Reden gehalten am 15. November 1988 bei der akademischen Gedenkfeier des Englischen Seminars der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, von Siegfried Kross, Dieter Mehl, Martin Spevack. Bonn, 1989.
Album pages with this person
Citation and Licence
Delius, Nicholas, in: The Digital Shakespeare Memorial Album. Edited by Christa Jansohn. URI: http://www.shakespearealbum.de/uri/gnd/118983814. (Accessed on 04.11.2024)
This text is published under the following licence: CC BY-ND 3.0 DE. Digitzed media reproduced with the permission of the library of Birmingham.