The Sorrows of Young Werther - Softcover

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159569045X ISBN 13: 9781595690456

Publisher: MONDIAL, 2006

Synopsis

The Sorrows of Young Werther is a loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. It was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. --- The majority of the novel is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on the town of Garbenheim, near Wetzlar), where he meets and falls in love with Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Lotte is, however, already engaged to a man named Albert. Despite the pain this causes Werther, he spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. Every day serves as a torturing reminder that Lotte will never be able to requite his love...*

About this title

About the Author:

Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, he was not involved in the city's official affairs. 38-year-old Johann Caspar married Goethe's mother, Catharina Elizabeth Textor, the daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt Johann Wolfgang Textor and his wife Anna Margaretha Lindheimer, when she was 17 at Frankfurt on 20 August 1748. All their children, except for Goethe and his sister, Cornelia Friederike Christiana, who was born in 1750, died at early ages. His father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time, especially languages (Latin, Greek, French, Italian, English and Hebrew). Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing. Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not. Goethe had a persistent dislike of the Roman Catholic Church, and characterized its history as a "hotchpotch of fallacy and violence" (Mischmasch von Irrtum und Gewalt). His great passion was drawing. Goethe quickly became interested in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer were among his early favourites. He had a lively devotion to theatre as well and was greatly fascinated by puppet shows that were annually arranged in his home; a familiar theme in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. He also took great pleasure in reading from the great works about history and religion. He writes about this period: I had from childhood the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginnings of books, and the divisions of a work, first of the five books of Moses, and then of the 'Aeneid' and Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'. . . If an ever busy imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither, if the medley of fable and history, mythology and religion, threatened to bewilder me, I readily fled to those oriental regions, plunged into the first books of Moses, and there, amid the scattered shepherd tribes, found myself at once in the greatest solitude and the greatest society.

About this edition

• Publisher: MONDIAL
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 159569045X
• ISBN 13: 9781595690456
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104
• Editor: Dole Nathen Haskell