Meister Eckhart
Editions worth owning
Eckhart preached and wrote mostly in Middle High German, and also wrote in Latin for an academic audience. Every English version you read is somebody's translation, and translators make real choices about hard words like Gelassenheit or grunt. That is why two editions can render the same sermon quite differently.
This site uses C. de B. Evans's 1924 English translation of Franz Pfeiffer's German edition, published in the Everyman's Library and now in the public domain. It is the reason you can read full sermons here free of charge. The sermon numbers on this site follow Pfeiffer's order, which does not match the numbering used in newer books, so a given sermon might be called Sermon 4 here and something else entirely in Walshe or in Quint's German critical edition.
The translations below all rest, to different degrees, on the work of Josef Quint, who re-edited the German texts from the manuscripts in the twentieth century. If you want to go deeper than this site, any of these is a reasonable next step. None of them is wrong to start with, so pick the one that matches what you want from Eckhart right now.
The modern one-volume standard
Maurice O'C. Walshe's The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, revised by Bernard McGinn and published by Crossroad in 2009, is the edition most scholars and serious readers point to now. It gathers the German sermons and treatises in one volume, translated from Quint's critical text, with McGinn's notes correcting and updating Walshe's original 1979-87 translation.
If you want a single book to live with for years, this is probably it. It uses the Quint numbering, so cross-referencing with academic writing on Eckhart is easier than with older translations.
The Paulist Press scholarly volumes
Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn's Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, Paulist Press, 1981, was for a long time the standard English introduction for students. It includes Eckhart's own defense of his teaching at the heresy trial, which is hard to find translated elsewhere, along with a long introduction on his life and thought.
Bernard McGinn also edited a companion volume, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, Paulist Press, 1986, with contributions from other scholars. It adds more sermons and some of the Latin works, and is aimed at readers who already have some grounding in medieval theology.
Shorter paperbacks for a first read
Oliver Davies's Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, Penguin Classics, 1994, is a compact and readable selection with a helpful introduction. It is a sensible place to start if you want a slim book rather than a doorstop, and it is easy to find secondhand.
Raymond B. Blakney's Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation, Harper, 1941, is older and its scholarship has been superseded in places, but the prose reads well and it was for decades the way English-speaking readers first met Eckhart. Some readers still prefer its plain, direct tone.
A book about Eckhart rather than just by him
Bernard McGinn's The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart, Crossroad, 2001, offers a study of Eckhart's ideas, the ground of the soul, the birth of God in the soul, the Godhead beyond God, written by the scholar most responsible for the current state of Eckhart studies in English. Rather than presenting the texts whole, it quotes and discusses them, so readers should not expect a translation in the usual sense.
This is worth owning once you have read some sermons and want help thinking about what Eckhart was actually doing, philosophically and theologically, and how his more startling lines fit with his broader teaching.
What this site is, and is not
Everything quoted on this site comes from the Evans translation, chosen because it is public domain and so freely shareable, not because it is the final word on Eckhart's German. If a line here strikes you, it is worth checking how Walshe or Colledge and McGinn render the same passage. Comparing translations is itself a small way of noticing where the real difficulty, and the real meaning, lies.
For a general orientation to Eckhart before you buy anything, see how to read Eckhart and start here.
The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart
Maurice O'C. Walshe, revised by Bernard McGinn. Crossroad, 2009.
This is the current one-volume standard in English, translated from Josef Quint's critical edition and revised by Bernard McGinn. It covers the German sermons and treatises and uses the modern Quint numbering, which differs from the numbering used on this site.
Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense
Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. Paulist Press, 1981.
A widely used scholarly selection that includes Eckhart's own defense of his teaching at his heresy trial. It has a long introduction and was for years the standard student edition.
Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher
edited by Bernard McGinn. Paulist Press, 1986.
A companion volume to Colledge and McGinn's selection of core sermons, edited by Bernard McGinn with other scholars. It adds further sermons and some Latin material for readers who want more than that initial selection.
Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings
Oliver Davies. Penguin Classics, 1994.
A compact Penguin Classics selection with a clear introduction, good for a first encounter with Eckhart. It does not aim to be complete, but it is easy to carry and easy to find.
Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation
Raymond B. Blakney. Harper, 1941.
An older translation, first published in 1941, with plain and direct English. Some of its scholarship has since been revised, but it introduced many English readers to Eckhart and still reads well.
The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart
Bernard McGinn. Crossroad, 2001.
A study of Eckhart's thought rather than a translation of his texts, written by the leading scholar in the field. It is useful once you have read some sermons directly and want help with the ideas behind them, like the ground of the soul or the Godhead beyond God.
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30 Days with Meister Eckhart
One short passage from his sermons each day for thirty days, with a plain paragraph on what he means. It is free, and leaving takes one click.