The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1749–1832 · Germany

Originally Die Leiden des jungen Werther (German)

Why it matters

The book that ignited European Romanticism: an artist's letters chart a hopeless love spiraling past anything friendship or reason can talk him back from. Young men dressed like Werther, some died like him: the first literary phenomenon of feeling, and still its sharpest study.

At a glance

Short, emotionally direct letters; difficulty is tonal rather than structural.