What is the meaning of a "bestseller" for the history of literature? How do we defi ne it in the fi rst place, and what consequences does the success on the book market have for the literary evaluation of a text? What is the relationship between quantity and quality? Many literary scholars shy away from doing research on "bestsellers", but the question regarding the formation of a literary canon is closely connected with this issue. How do we evaluate the quality of a text in the fi rst place? The topic of the "bestseller" forces us to examine more closely the relationship between the reading public, literary scholarship, and the book market. On the one hand we have to examine the sales strategies for a book, on the other we have to consider what intentions a literary text might pursue fi rst of all, and how we as literary scholars have to engage with the text critically. From this results also the challenge to re-investigate the foundation of literary scholarship and to take note of premodern and modern "bestsellers" in their social-historical and mental-historical relevance, without ignoring the textual aesthetics.
