Schubert and His World: A Biographical Dictionary

If you want to put Schubert in context and are willing to delve into more esoteric matters, this exhaustive book of biographies might be just the ticket. Schubert himself gets the first and longest entry, but you will also find such gentlemen as August von Schaeffer, a doctor who, in 1823, treated Schubert for something that might have been syphilis, and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1805), a poet whose words Schubert sometimes set. This is one to sample or to use as a reference, and is a definite must for the dedicated Schubertian.