We mourn the death of Goethe Yearbook coeditor Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge. Despite serious blows to her health over the last two and a half years since her diagnosis with breast cancer, and a dispiriting prognosis, Sarah was determined to participate fully in scholarly life and was an equal partner in the production of this volume, as well as the two previous volumes, 31 (2024) and 32 (2025). She often expressed how important it was for her to continue working on the Goethe Yearbook, and she continued to read submissions, correspond with authors, and consult about editorial issues through the last months and even weeks of her life. Possessing an intellect both imaginative and precise, Sarah was, in my view, the ideal coeditor, knowledgeable in many areas and having the insight to recognize when to call on others’ expertise, generous with her ideas and suggestions while maintaining high standards and ideals of scholarship, committed to mentoring authors, particularly graduate students and those just starting out in our profession, with the goal of helping them to produce their best work.
Sarah published distinguished research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature, addressing a wide array of authors and topics. In 2020, she was awarded the Goethe Society of North America Essay Prize for her article “Karl Phillip Moritz as Cognitive Narratologist: Travel Writing, Visualization, and Literary Experience,” published in the Lessing Yearbook XLVII (2020). Sarah coedited, with C. Allen Speight, the volume Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship” and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2020), and is the author of two monographs, Novel Affinities: Composing the Family in the German Novel 1795–1830 (Camden House, 2016), and Composite Selves: Subjecthood in the German Novel, 1700–1795 (Oxford University Press), whose publication date coincides with the date of her death. She completed revisions to that final book under near-impossible circumstances, while undergoing chemotherapy treatments and with the knowledge that her life would soon end.
Sarah’s scholarship emphasizes the importance of communities and of families, both biological and nonbiological, in forming the individual, and her dedication to researching, writing, and supporting other’s work, even as her illness progressed, reflects her commitment to our scholarly “family.” Her publications and editorial work, in turn, have helped to shape our profession in ways both visible and intangible. We grieve her death and celebrate what she has left behind, her writings and the memory of her fortitude and unwavering dedication to the scholarly enterprise.
--Eleanor ter Horst