Short answers, pulled from the story.
Goethe's Faust follows the scholar Heinrich Faust, who makes a wager with Mephistopheles: if the Devil can deliver a moment of earthly transcendence so complete that Faust wishes it to last forever, Faust will die and serve the Devil in Hell. Part One centres on Faust's seduction of Gretchen and its tragic consequences. Part Two expands into classical allusion, history, politics, and philosophy, ending with Faust's redemption in Heaven.
Goethe worked on Faust for roughly six decades. The earliest drafts, known as the Urfaust, were developed between 1772 and 1775. He finished writing Part Two in 1831, just before his death. Part Two was published posthumously in 1832.
The Urfaust is the earliest known version of Goethe's Faust, developed between 1772 and 1775. It has twenty-two scenes and 1,441 lines of rhymed verse. The original manuscript is lost, but a copy was discovered in 1886. One key difference from the published text is the ending for Gretchen: the Urfaust declares "Sie ist gerichtet" (she is condemned), whereas the final Part One changes this to "Sie ist gerettet" (she shall be saved).
Faust has been translated into English by many hands. Bayard Taylor published a translation in the original metres in 1870-71, which remained in print for a century. Anna Swanwick translated Part One in 1850 and Part Two in 1878, considered among the best versions. A 1821 anonymous translation published by Thomas Boosey and Sons has been attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though that attribution remains controversial.
Boris Pasternak translated Part One of Faust into Russian. In August 1950, his translation was attacked in the Soviet literary journal Novy Mir, which accused him of distorting Goethe's ideas and introducing an individualist flavour. Pasternak described the attack in a letter to Ariadna Efron, the exiled daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva.
The world premiere of both parts of Faust in unabridged form took place in 1938 at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. The longest modern staging was Peter Stein's production for Expo 2000 in Hanover, which ran 21 hours including intervals, with Bruno Ganz and Christian Nickel sharing the title role.