Werther is a young man of feeling who leaves town and settles in the village of Wahlheim, where he sketches, reads Homer, and befriends the local children. He meets Lotte, a warm and capable young woman who is already promised to the steady Albert. Werther falls in love anyway, and the novel unfolds as a series of letters to his friend Wilhelm, tracking his obsession as it sours into despair. Goethe drew on his own unrequited feelings for Charlotte Buff, and the book ends in Werther's suicide.
Pick this up if you want the founding text of Sturm und Drang and the novel that made European readers weep and copy its hero's blue coat. It suits anyone curious about how romantic longing was written before irony took over, and it stays short enough to read in a sitting.
Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1774
- Language
- EN
