Standard Reference Works
Guides and Introductions
Beddow, Michael. Thomas Mann: “Doctor Faustus.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
A useful and compact introductory guide, even though one occasionally gets the impression that Beddow does not actually like Doctor Faustus.
Bergsten, Gunilla. Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus”: The Sources and Structure of the Novel. Translated by Krishna Winston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Pathbreaking analysis on the sources and inner structure of Doctor Faustus, frequently quoted even today. Possibly the single most important monograph ever published on the novel.
Kontje, Todd. The Cambridge Introduction to Thomas Mann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Concise and well-written introductory guide to Thomas Mann. Includes a short chapter on Doctor Faustus.
Reed, Terence J. Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon University Press, 1974.
If Bergsten’s study is the most important monograph to ever be published on Doctor Faustus, then Reed’s book can arguably make the same claim about Mann’s oeuvre as a whole, at least in English. Focuses on Mann’s debts to the German cultural and intellectual tradition, but touches upon almost all major aspects of his work as well. For students who want to delve deeper than the Kontje volume allows.
Vaget, Hans Rudolf. “‘German’ Music and German Catastrophe: A Re-Reading of Doctor Faustus.” In A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann, edited by Herbert Lehnert and Eva Wessell, 221–44. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004.
Thorough introductory article on Doctor Faustus, divided into similar sub-divisions as this Guide. Makes a strong argument for the novel as a commentary specifically on the “German Catastrophe” of Nazism and the Holocaust.
Letters, Essays, and Autobiographical Documents with Special Relevance to Doctor Faustus
Mann, Thomas. The Letters of Thomas Mann 1889–1955. Volume 2: 1943–1955. Edited and Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1970.
Unfortunately, Mann’s diaries from the 1940s have not been translated into English, and only a small fraction of his many letters are included in this volume. Nevertheless, the 150 or so pages of this volume that deal directly with the 1940s provide unparalleled insight into Mann’s life and mindset during the years in which he wrote Doctor Faustus.
Mann, Thomas. Thomas Mann’s Antifascist Radio Addresses, 1940–1945: German Listeners! Edited and translated by Elaine Chen, Jeffrey L. High, and Hans Rudolf Vaget. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2025.
While working on the first half of Doctor Faustus, Mann recorded a series of anti-fascist radio broadcasts for the BBC. These provide valuable insight into his political thinking at the time and make for especially interesting reading when compared to Zeitblom’s parenthetical reflections in the novel.
Mann, Thomas. The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of “Doctor Faustus.” New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
Mann’s book-length account of the composition of Doctor Faustus is a fascinating and highly informative document, even though it needs to be treated with a certain amount of circumspection. (The original German title translates as The Genesis of “Doctor Faustus”: Novel of a Novel).
Mann, Thomas. Thomas Mann’s Addresses. Delivered at the Library of Congress, 1942–1949. Washington, DC: The Library of Congress, 1963.
Contains two important lectures that deal directly with themes presented in the novel, “Germany and the Germans” (1945) and “Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the Light of Contemporary Events” (1947).
Schoenberg, E. Randol, ed. The Doctor Faustus Dossier: Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, and Their Contemporaries, 1930–1951. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018.
Comprehensive dossier of the Schoenberg-Mann controversy precipitated by Mann’s supposed act of plagiarism in chapter XXII. Contains not only many letters by both figures but also a number of interesting early critical studies.
Biographies
Boes, Tobias. Thomas Mann’s War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
Explores Mann’s political activism and his self-stylization as a public intellectual during the period of his American exile.
Heilbut, Anthony. Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
Probably the most readable biography of Mann available in English. Focuses on Mann’s suppressed homoeroticism and deals mainly with the first half of his life, not his American exile.
Kurzke, Hermann. Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art. Translated by Leslie Wilson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Generally recognized as the most critically astute biography of Mann, by a major German Mann scholar. Unfortunately, the English translation is not always fortuitous.
Bibliographies
Fetzer, John F. Changing Perceptions of Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus”: Criticism 1947–1992. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996.
Contains a detailed overview of the first fifty years of Doctor Faustus criticism and includes a bibliography with over 750 entries.