Goethe’s original was published in German in 1774, but, here, we’re utilizing R. Dillon Boylan’s 1854 English translation.

Boylan was British, but we’re Heathens, so we’ve jettisoned Boylan’s British spellings in favor of their American counterparts, and we’ve modernized several hyphened words so they’re easier on your eyes: to-day is now today, to-morrow has become tomorrow, and so on.

Additionally, any time a new/different character speaks, we begin their dialogue on a new line, whereas the original text sometimes had several characters all speaking within the same paragraph—an artifact of a bygone literary era that never fails to drive us absolutely bananas as we inevitably lose track of who said what to who.

We’ve also appended 170 footnotes to enhance your reading with definitions and parallels of many archaic and literary terms Goethe/Boylan utilized throughout the story, as well as to provide clarity, context, and commentary where necessary.

The original text also contained three footnotes, which we have retained and set apart using asterisks.*

“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is the prototypical cult novel of all time.” —Thomas Reed Whissen, Classic Cult Fiction

“The world at once took possession of The Sorrows of Young Werther and it took possession of the world . . . [it was] the spark that fell into the powder keg causing the sudden expansion of forces that had been waiting release.” —Thomas Mann

“The novel’s romantic sensibilities struck a chord among the youth of Europe, who admired it with a cult-like fervor.” —Nicholas J. Karolides, 100 Banned Books

“I categorically say: read The Sorrows of Young Werther!” —Franz Kafka

“Throughout Europe, so many young men shot themselves while dressed as Werther and seated at their writing desks with an open copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther in front of them that the book was banned in Italy, Germany, and Denmark.” —Loren Coleman, The Copycat Effect

“Werther appeared to seize the hearts of men in all quarters of the world, and to utter for them the word which they had long been waiting to hear.” —Thomas Carlyle

“Dealing with depression because of his unrequited love, Goethe wrote the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, an inspiration for many Romantics. It proved cathartic for him, but started a cult of morbidity and a series of suicides among impressionable young men, who felt they suffered as had Werther.” —Joanne Schneider, The Age of Romanticism

“Significantly thus, in Mary Shelley’s work, The Sorrows of Young Werther turns out to be one of the few books on the syllabus for Frankenstein’s monster to read in his hovel, so as to become precisely human.” —Barbara Johnson, A Life with Mary Shelley

The Sorrows of Young Werther