The well-known painter, Oskar Kokoschka, also produced a considerable and significant body of literary work: plays, a few poems, essays and autobiographical stories. The present volume contains all his plays ( some in more than one version) and the poems, plus one short prose passage. All the pieces in this collection, apart from the play Comenius, were written in the period 1907-1918. The plays, despite Kokoschka's dislike of the term, reflect the style of Expressionism current in Germany during the period. Indeed, the early ones anticipated and, to as certain extent, helped to define Expressionism.