A major work of German romanticism in a translation that is acknowledged as the definitive English language version. The Vintage Classics edition also includes NOVELLA, Goethe's poetic vision of an idyllic pastoral society.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749?1832) was a novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, and scientist. He wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther when he was just twenty-four. His enduring dramatic poem "Faust" took fifty-seven years to write and was published in its entirety only after Goethe's death at eighty-three.

BURTON PIKE is professor emeritus of comparative literature at CUNY Graduate Center. A leading critic, scholar, and translator of German literature, he has written and edited books on Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, and many others, and was the editor and co-translator of Musil's The Man With-out Qualities.