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TITLE DEED HOW DID CELEBRATED BOOKS GET THEIR NAMES? Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20050918
Author:GARY DEXTER

ONE OFTEN hears talk of the "Faust legend'' as if the story of the pact-making necromancer were just that - a legend. But there was a real Faust, and one not too far distant in time from Marlowe. He was one Georg or Johann Faustus, who died around 1540 and was mentioned in dispatches by Luther and Melanchthon. Such was his notoriety that a book of his deeds, the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, spiced up with some previous tales of devil-dealing, was published in German in 1587. Its English translation a few years later - it was a Europe- wide sensation - was Marlowe's chief source. Later, ...

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