This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.
The literary sensation
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) launched its twenty-five year old author on the world stage overnight. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel gave voice to young bourgeois intellectuals who despaired of finding fulfillment and authenticity in a hierarchical, convention-bound society.
In the novel, Werther, a social rebel with artistic leanings, falls in love with Lotte, a young woman who is already engaged to Werther’s friend, the stolid Albert. In a spiral of extravagantly self-destructive behavior and torment, Werther pays the ultimate price for his illicit passion.
About the author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a towering figure in European culture, a living monument to whom countless other writers and intellectuals made pilgrimages. Author of literary masterpieces such as the drama
Faust (1803 and 1832), the
Roman Elegies (1795), and the novels
Elective Affinities (1809) and
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795), Goethe was also a scientist who produced an influential color theory in response to Newton and did important work in the fields of geology, botany, and anatomy; an able statesman and administrator at the court of Weimar; and a theorist and collector of art.
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