There is general agreement in the scholarship about Eduard Moerike and his work, that one looks in vain for ideas. Nevertheless, Moerike was heir to a very rich literary tradition (his novel Maler Nolten was published in the year of Goethe's death). Moerike's creative output and his reading (Belesenheit) are fascinating reflections of a transformation of this tradition to which some of his contemporaries, i.e. Lenau and Waiblinger, seem to have succumbed. Moerike's Reading in this study is approached from two directions. On the one hand, it is a study of influence and affinity by and for Shakespeare, Goethe and Lichtenberg, with emphasis on the poetry and letters. Secondly, this study attempts to reconstruct Moerike's extant library. His marginalia and notations which have been carefully transcribed indicate retrospective, assimilative and, later, critical reading and re-readings of the literature of modern Europe.