Since the invention of the printing press in ca. 1450, the early modern book market emerged, and so also the phenomenon of the bestseller. The sixteenth century witnessed especially the rise of Schwankbücher (books with jest narratives), and one of the most influential examples was Georg Wickram's Rollwagenbüchlein (1555), a collection of facetious, exciting, horrifying, dramatic, foolish, and also didactic short prose tales reflecting on the ordinary lives of people primarily in the countryside and cities. Wickram drew from a range of literary sources, and his work in turn became the inspiration for many other literary collections (Montanus, Kirchhof, Frey, etc.). Although the Rollwagenbüchlein can easily be identified as one of the most influential sixteenth-century texts in the history of German literature, it has never been translated into any other language. The current book offers a biographical and interpretive sketch, the translation into English, and an extensive scholarly apparatus with linguistic, historical, cultural, and literary explanations.
