Jim Reed has taught German language and literature at the University of Oxford since 1961 and retires on 30 September 2004. This collection of essays in his honour consists of contributions from friends and pupils, and is principally concerned with Goethe, Heine, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Brecht. The themes and approaches represented are those with which Reed himself has engaged in many of his own publications, beginning with Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition (1974) and The Classical Centre: Goethe and Weimar (1980), and which is summed up in the title given to his recent collection of essays »Humanpraxis Literatur«.