The Sorrows of Young Werther, Elective Affinities, and Novella

The definitive English version of three landmark works of world literature

Containing three of Goethe’s major prose works, this volume explores a range of themes: unfulfilled love, infidelity, divorce, tragic love, fantasy, and moral rebirth. One of Goethe’s best-known works, The Sorrows of Young Werther, explores the extremes of the subjective experience through the novel’s depiction of a sensitive young man caught up in a love impossible to fulfill. In Elective Affinities, a novel of tragic love, Goethe employs all the requisites of sentimental romance to give a deeply ironic perspective to the idea of love. Finally, Novella, named for the prose form that Goethe saw as essentially revolving around a single “unheard-of event,” thoroughly examines the possibilities inherent in that genre.

The Collected Works of Goethe presents modern translations of a representative portion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s vast body of work. Selected from more than 140 volumes in German, this twelve-volume series remains the standard collection in English and features poetry, drama, fiction, memoir, criticism, and scientific writing.