The Sorrows of Young Werther

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A young man of feeling writes to his friend Wilhelm from a small town where he has gone to settle some family business and ends up staying for the countryside, the peasants, his drawing and his reading of Homer. At a country ball he meets Lotte, who is as good as engaged to the sensible Albert, and from then on his letters record a passion that has nowhere to go. Goethe wrote the novel in a few weeks in 1774, at twenty-four, drawing on his own infatuation and a friend's suicide. It made him famous across Europe, started a fashion for blue coats and yellow waistcoats, and was blamed for a wave of imitations of its ending. This edition presents the text in R. D. Boylan's translation. Read it online in your browser on Vinteuil; the first chapter is free.