The Sufferings of Young Werther

Corngold’s new translation is of the very highest quality, punctiliously faithful to Goethe’s German and sensitive to gradations of style in this extraordinary, trail-blazing first novel.

-J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books A masterpiece of the European imagination, The Sufferings of Young Werther is the classic strum und drang tale of youthful angst and tragedy. The acclaimed translator Stanley Corngold brings passion and precision to Goethe’s timeless novel of obsessive love and madness in this magnificent new rendition. The text is accompanied by the translator’s introduction and is fully annotated.

Goethe’s themes of unrequited love, the pain of rejection, deepening despair, and their tragic consequences are as relevant today as when the work was first published in 1774. This hugely influential novel was immediately bought, printed, read, exported, and imitated throughout Europe, and what Goethe called the novel’s fire rockets have continued to blaze through the centuries, influencing, among many others, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. The reader’s understanding and appreciation are enhanced by the Norton Critical Edition’s inclusion of a rich selection of Goethe’s letters and diary entries as well an autobiographical excerpt and lampoons.

Criticism brings together seven of the most influential essays written about The Sufferings of Young Werther over the last fifty years. Contributors include Harry Steinhauer, Roland Barthes, R. Ellis Dye, David Wellbery, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Dirk von Petersdorff, and Christiane Frey and David Martyn.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.