Presented as a collection of confessional letters written by the eponymous protagonist, The Sorrows of Young Werther charts the emotional journey of a young man who, during a stay in a picturesque German village, falls in love with Lotte, a local woman engaged to another man. As he realizes that his passion is doomed to failure and constant pain, Werther contemplates taking the most drastic measures.

Partly autobiographical, and the prototype for many later Romantic works in its depiction of the sensitive, tortured hero, Goethe's seminal classic is a timeless masterpiece of world literature.