Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 
The Sorrows of Young Werther (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential 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 Goethes 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 Werthers friend, the stolid Albert. In a spiral of extravagantly self-destructive behavior and torment, Werther pays the ultimate price for his illicit passion.

A propos de l’auteur

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 Meisters 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.