This anthology provides brief insights into the literary worlds of completely different writers, who often exhibit unexpected connections and links to one another. For instance, the young Friedrich Dürrenmatt was primarily influenced by the underground, labyrinthine aspects of the city of the dead in Karl May's Ardistan and Dschinnistan. The author of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, and his American colleague Mark Twain met in September 1887 in New York for a five-hour chat on a park bench in Washington Square Park. Each of these diverse authors is to be considered individually, yet they are all part of a literary cosmos. Nine of the thirteen contributions presented here were originally published in 'Glanz & Elend. Magazine for Literature and Social Criticism'; the essay on Ludwig Thoma was previously published in the volume Ludwig Thoma for Jurists.