Founded by Jorun Johns in 1988, Ariadne Press was established to share and preserve the distinct character of Austrian culture. With close to 300 titles primarily from the interwar period through contemporary, our books range from exciting fiction to autobiographies, pioneering critical work, poetry, and plays, and address diverse subjects from Nazism to science fiction to music and humor. Our earliest books include letters by Mozart and early 19th century authors such as Marie von Ebner Eschenbach, Adalbert Stifter, and an anthology of 19th-century fiction.

We distinguish Austrian from German literature by highlighting Austria’s multi-lingual and multi-cultural literature tradition. Ariadne’s books are known for quality scholarship, an unparalleled selection of female authors, as well as opening new territory for the curious and uninitiated. From well-known authors like Stefan Zweig and Pulitzer-prize winner Elfreide Jelinek, to provocateurs Adolf Loos and Oskar Kokoschka, the great stylist Robert Musil, vanguard feminist poet Ingeborg Bachmann, and playwrights Arthur Schnitzler and Thomas Bernhard, there’s something new to be discovered in every Ariadne publication about the sensibilities of one of the world’s greatest “melting pots” of languages and ideas that was and is Austria.

Among the most popular books in our list are those that have served to preserve Austrian Jewish culture, which thrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While Jews comprised only a small percentage of the population of the Habsburg Empire, journalists and authors with a Jewish background were at the forefront of cultural production and criticism at that time.