Primary Literature

The current standard German edition of Benjamin’s work remains Suhrkamp’s seven volume Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Tiedemann and Schweppenhauser, although a new Kritish Gesamtausgabe is currently being edited, also by Suhrkamp and projected at twenty-one volumes over the next decade. The standard English edition is Harvard University Press’ recent four volume Selected Writings, Early Writings, and The Arcades Project.

Biographies in English 

• Eiland, H. and Jennings, M. W., Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, Cambridge, MA. & London: Harvard University Press, 2014.
• Leslie, E., 2007, Walter Benjamin: Critical Lives, London: Reaktion Books. (Scholar)
• Brodersen, M., 1996, Walter Benjamin: A Biography, London & New York: Verso. (Scholar)
• Scholem, G., 1981, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, New York: Review Books. (Scholar)
• Witte, B., 1991, Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography, Detroit: Wayne University Press. (Scholar)
• Wizisla, E., 2009, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: the Story of a Friendship, London: Libris. (Scholar)

Selected English Anthologies

• Benjamin, A. (ed.), 1989, The Problems of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin, London: Routledge. (Scholar)
• ––– (ed.), 2005a, Walter Benjamin and Art,  London & New York: Continuum. (Scholar)
• ––– (ed.), 2005b, Walter Benjamin and History, London & New York: Continuum. (Scholar)
• Benjamin, A. and Hanssen, B. (eds.), 2002, Walter Benjamin and Romanticism,  London & New York: Continuum. (Scholar)
• Benjamin, A. and Osborne, P. (eds.), 1994/2000, Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, London & New York: Routledge/Manchester: Clinamen Press. (Scholar)
• Ferris, D. S. (ed.), 2004, The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Fischer, G. (ed.), 1996, With The Sharpened Axe of Reason: Approaches to Walter Benjamin, Oxford: Berg. (Scholar)
• Goebel, R. J. (ed.), 2009, A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin, Rochester & Woodbridge: Camden House. (Scholar)
• Hanssen, B. (ed.), 2006, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, London & New York: Continuum. (Scholar)
• Hartoonian, G., (ed.), 2010, Walter Benjamin and Architecture, London & New York: Routledge. (Scholar)
• Osborne, P. (ed.), 2005, Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Volume I: Philosophy, Volume II: Modernity, Volume III: Appropriations, London & New York: Routledge. (Scholar)
• Smith, G. (ed.), 1988, On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and Recollections, Cambridge, MA. & London: MIT. (Scholar)
• ––– (ed.), 1989, Walter Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)

Selected Secondary Literature

• Adorno, T. W., 1955, ‘A Portrait of Walter Benjamin’, in Prisms, Cambridge, MA.: MIT., 1983, pp. 227–242. (Scholar)
• –––, 1931, ‘The Actuality of Philosophy’, in Telos 31 (Spring 1977): 120–133. (Scholar)
• Agamben, G., 2005, State of Exception, trans. K. Attell, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Ariella, A., 2007, ‘The Tradition of the Oppressed’, Qui Parle, 16 (2): 73–96. (Scholar)
• Asman, C. L., 1992, ‘Theatre and Agon/Agon and Theatre: Walter Benjamin and Florens Christian Rang’, MLN, 107(3): 606–624. (Scholar)
• Avelar, I., 2004, The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics, and Politics, New York & Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. (Scholar)
• Benjamin, A., 1989, ‘Tradition and Experience: Walter Benjamin’s Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, in Benjamin, A. (ed.), 1989, pp. 122–140.  (Scholar)
• –––, 2013, Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (Scholar)
• Bernsaïd, D., 1990, Walter Benjamin sentinelle messianique: À la gauche du possible, Paris: Plon. (Scholar)
• Bolle, W., 2009, ‘Paris on the Amazon? Postcolonial Interrogations of Benjamin’s European Modernism’, in Goebel 2009, pp. 216–245. (Scholar)
• Brederkamp, H., 1999, ‘From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes’, Critical Inquiry, 25(2): 247–266. (Scholar)
• Buck-Morss, S., 1977, The Origins of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute, Hassocks: Harvester Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1989, The Dialectics of Seeing, Cambridge, MA. & London: MIT Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1992, ‘Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered’, October, 62: 3–41, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 291–331. (Scholar)
• Bullock, M. P., 1987, Romanticism and Marxism: The Philosophical Development of Literary Theory and Literary History in Walter Benjamin & Friedrich Schlegel, New York, Bern & Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. (Scholar)
• Caygill, H., 1994, ‘Benjamin, Heidegger and the Destruction of Tradition’, in Benjamin and Osborne 1994/2000, pp. 1–31. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience, London: Routledge. (Scholar)
• –––, 2004, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Cultural History,’ in Ferris 2004, pp. 73–96. (Scholar)
• –––, 2005, ‘Non-Messianic Political Theology in Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”’, in Benjamin, A. 2005b, pp. 215–226. (Scholar)
• Charles, M., 2018, ‘Secret Signals from Another World: Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Innervation’, New German Critique, 45(3): 39–72. (Scholar)
• –––, M. 2020, Modernism Between Benjamin and Goethe, London: Bloomsbury. (Scholar)
• Chisholm, D., 2009, ‘Benjamin’s Gender, Sex, and Eros’, in Goebel 2009, pp. 246–272. (Scholar)
• –––, 2005, Queer constellations: subcultural space in the wake of the city, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Scholar)
• Chow, R., 1989, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Love Affair with Death’, New German Critique, 48: 63–86. (Scholar)
• Clark, T. J, 2003, ‘Should Benjamin Have Read Marx’, Boundary 2 30(1): 31–49; reprinted in Osborne 2005, III: 81–96. (Scholar)
• Cohen, M., 1993, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. (Scholar)
• Cowan, B., 1981, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory’, New German Critique, 22: 109–122. (Scholar)
• Derrida, J., 1989–90, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundations of Authority”’, trans. Mary Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review, 11: 973–1045, reprinted in Osborne 2005, 1: 398–432. (Scholar)
• –––, 1994, Spectres of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the New International, trans. P. Kamuf, London: Routledge. (Scholar)
• –––, 1997, The Politics of Friendship, trans. G. Collins, London & New York: Verso. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, ‘Marx and Sons’, in Ghostly demarcations: a symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx, ed. M. Sprinker, London & New York: Verso, pp. 213–269. (Scholar)
• Didi-Huberman, G., 2005, ‘The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, the Then and Modernity’, in Benjamin, A., 2005b, pp. 2–18. (Scholar)
• Eagleton, T., 1981, Walter Benjamin, Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism, London: NLB. (Scholar)
• Eiland, H., 2011, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in EW, pp. 1–13. (Scholar)
• Ferber, I., 2013, Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin’s Early Reflections on Theater and Language, Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Scholar)
• Friedlander, E., 2012, Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Frisby, D., 1996, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Prehistory of Modernity as Anticipation of Postmodernity? Some Methodological Reflections’, in Fischer 1996, pp. 15–32. (Scholar)
• Fuld, W., 1981, ‘Walter Benjamins Beziehung zu Ludwig Klages’, Akzente 28(3): 274–287. (Scholar)
• Gilloch, G., 2000, Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations, Cambridge: Polity. (Scholar)
• Goebel, R. J., 2001, Benjamin heute. Großstadtdiskurs, Postkolonialität und Flanerie zwischen den Kulturen, Munich: Iudicium. (Scholar)
• Habermas, J., 1983, ‘Walter Benjamin: Consciousness-raising or rescuing critique’, in Philosophical-Political Profiles, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA. & London: MIT Press, pp. 129–163, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 107–136. (Scholar)
• Hamacher, W., 2002, ‘Guilt History: Benjamin’s Sketch “Capitalism as Religion”’, Diacritics, 32(3/4): 81–106. (Scholar)
• Hansen, M., 1987, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”’, New German Critique, 40: 179–224; reprinted in Osborne 2005, II: 253–290. (Scholar)
• –––, 2011, Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. (Scholar)
• Hanssen, B., 1995, ‘Philosophy at Its Origin: Walter Benjamin’s Prologue to the Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, MLN, 110(4): 809–833. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998, Walter Benjamin’s Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. (Scholar)
• Hodge, J., 2005, ‘The Timing of Elective Affinity: Walter Benjamin’s Strong Aesthetics’, in Benjamin, A., 2005a, pp. 14–31. (Scholar)
• Holz, H. H., 1992, Philosophie der zersplittern Welt: Reflexionen über Walter Benjamin, Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein. (Scholar)
• Kang, J., 2014, Walter Benjamin and the Media: the Spectacle of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity. (Scholar)
• Khatib, S. R., 2013, “Teleologie ohne Endzweck. Walter Benjamins Ent-stellung des Messianischen”, Marburg: Tectum. (Scholar)
• Kittsteiner, H. D., 1986, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Historicism’, New German Critique 39: 179–215. (Scholar)
• Lacoue-Labarthe, P., 1992, ‘Introduction to Walter Benjamin’s The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism’, Studies in Romanticism,  31(4): 421–432, reprinted in Hanssen and Benjamin, A. 2002, pp. 9–18. (Scholar)
• Lambrianou, N., 2005, ‘Neo-Kantianism and Messianism: Origin and Interruption in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin’, in Osborne 2005, I: 82–104. (Scholar)
• Lebovic, N., 2013, The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of Nazi Biopolitics, New York & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (Scholar)
• Leslie, E., 2000, Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, London: Pluto. (Scholar)
• –––, 2008, ‘Revolutionary Potential and Walter Benjamin: A Postwar Reception History’, in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism , eds. Jacques Bidet and Stavis Kouvelakis, Leiden: Brill, pp. 549–566. (Scholar)
• Lewis, T. E., 2020, Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education: From Riddles to Radio, Albany: SUNY. (Scholar)
• Lindner, B. (ed.), 2006, Benjamin-Handbuch. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Stuttgart: Metzler. (Scholar)
• Liska, V., 2009, ‘The Legacy of Benjamin’s Messianism: Giorgio Agamben and Other Contenders’, in Goebel 2009, pp. 195–215. (Scholar)
• Löwy, M., 2005, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. Chris Turner, London & New York: Verso. (Scholar)
• McCole, J. J., 1993, Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Scholar)
• McFarland, J., 2013, Constellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now-Time of History, New York: Fordham University Press. (Scholar)
• Menninghaus, W., 2002, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Exposition of the Romantic Theory of Reflection’, trans. Robert J. Kiss, in Hanssen and Benjamin, A. 2002, pp. 19–50, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 25–62. (Scholar)
• Newman, J. O., 2011, Benjamin’s Library: Modernity, Nation, and the Baroque, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Scholar)
• Osborne, P., 1995, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde, London & New York: Verso. (Scholar)
• –––, 2011, ‘Philosophy after Theory: Transdisciplinarity and the New’, in Theory After ‘Theory’, eds. Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 19–33. (Scholar)
• Raz-Krakotzkin, A., 2013, ‘On the Right Side of the Barricades: Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Zionism’, Comparative Literature, 65(3): 363–381. (Scholar)
• Rrenban, M., 2005, Wild, Unforgettable Philosophy: In Early Works of Walter Benjamin, Lanham & Oxford: Lexington Books. (Scholar)
• Roff, S. L., 2004, ‘Benjamin and Psychoanalysis’, in Ferris 2004, pp. 115–133. (Scholar)
• Schmitt, C., 1956, Hamlet or Hecuba: the intrusion of time into the play, trans. D. Pan & J. Rust, New York: Telos Press, 2009. (Scholar)
• Steiner, U., 2001, ‘The True Politician: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of the Political’, trans. C. Sample, New German Critique, 83: 43–88. (Scholar)
• Tiedemann, R., 1983–4, ‘Historical Materialism or Political Messianism? An Interpretation of the Theses “On the Concept of History”’, in Smith 1989, pp. 175–209, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 137–168. (Scholar)
• Tomba, M., 2009, ‘Another Kind of Gewalt: Beyond Law. Re-Reading Walter Benjamin’, Historical Materialism, 17(1): 126–144. (Scholar)
• –––, 2006, La vera politica. Kant e Benjamin: la possibilità della giustizia, Macerata: Quodlibet. (Scholar)
• Weber, S., 2008, Benjamin’s abilities, Cambridge, MA., & London: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Weigel, S., 1996, Body- and Image-Space: Re-Reading Walter Benjamin, London & New York: Routledge. (Scholar)
• Wohlfarth, I., 1978, ‘On the Messianic Structure of Benjamin’s Last Reflections’, Glyph 3: 148–212, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 169–231. (Scholar)
• –––, 1992, ‘The Politics of Youth: Walter Benjamin’s Reading of The Idiot’, Diacritics 22 (3/4): 160–172. (Scholar)
• –––, 2002, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Idea of Technological Eros: A Tentative Reading of Zum Planetarium’, Benjamin Studies/Studien 1: 65–109. (Scholar)
• –––, 2008–9, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction’, Parts, 1–3, Radical Philosophy 142–144, Nov/Dec 2008, Jan/Feb 2009, March/April 2009, 7–19, 13–26, 9–24.  (Scholar)
• Wolin, R., 1994, An Aesthetics of Redemption, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. (Scholar)