Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur: ein Handbuch in zwei Bänden. 1

Johannes Scherr published his two-volume Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur in the mid-19th century as a comprehensive effort to synthesize the history of world literature for a German-speaking audience. Writing during a period of intense intellectual rigor in the German academic tradition, Scherr intended to move beyond simple biography, aiming instead to place literary movements within their broader sociocultural and historical contexts.

The work is noted for Scherr’s distinctively critical and sometimes polemical writing style, which reflected his active involvement in the political movements of 1848. While his scholarly approach was ambitious, it was eventually tempered by the evolving standards of professional literary history; however, the book remains a significant example of 19th-century encyclopedic scholarship and the era's fascination with the systematic categorization of human cultural production.