Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born on March 20, 1770, in Lauffen on the Neckar, a village in the southwestern part of Germany in Baden-Württemberg. After the death of his father, his mother remarried in 1774, and the family moved to Nürtingen. He attended Lutheran grammar schools and studied in the Theological Seminary in Tübingen from 1788 to 1793, where he became friends with fellow students Hegel and Schelling. After leaving Tübingen, Hölderlin worked as a tutor in private homes in Germany and Switzerland. In 1802 he became a private tutor in Bordeaux, but returned to Swabia a few months later in a schizophrenic state. He improved to the extent that he could continue his literary activities intermittently until 1806. After treatment in a clinic in Tübingen he was given to the custody of a carpenter's family named Zimmer, under whose care he remained 36 years until his death in 1843. Most of Hölderlin's poetry was published in various German periodicals and almanacs, so to speak in the small press publications of his day.

His novel Hyperion was published in two parts, in 1797 and 1799. He wrote three uncompleted versions of a drama relating the Empedocles legend, and published translations of Greek drama and poetry, with some critical essays. Gaining little popularity as a writer, he did not live to see an edition of his collected poems. His work passed into obscurity, until its gradual rediscovery in the early decades of the 20th century. Book jacket.