{"product_id":"die-leiden-des-jungen-werthers-erster-und-zweiter-theil","title":"The first edition of Goethe’s Werther: among the finest copies imaginable,  in contemporary gilt half-leather","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eDie Leiden des jungen Werthers. Erster und zweiter Theil\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e Leipzig, Weygand'sche Buchhandlung, 1774.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo parts in one volume, 224 pp. The first printing, the deluxe issue on strong paper, with the points recorded by Hagen, the errata notice on p. 224, the uncorrected page number 36 for 39, press-corrections on pp. 16 and 101, and all cancel leaves present. Small octavo (158 × 95 mm).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the engraved title-vignette by Adam Friedrich Oeser, Goethe's drawing-master in Leipzig, and a woodcut vignette to the Second Part.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContemporary half-leather, the spine richly gilt with floral tooling. On strong and entirely spotless paper, exceptionally fresh.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e❦\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWerther appeared in 1774, when Goethe was twenty-five, and it was an immediate sensation. It lifted an ambitious young lawyer from Frankfurt to the front rank of living writers, and its hero soon became a figure readers imitated, defended, condemned, dressed like, pitied and feared.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoethe drew on the Wetzlar circle of Charlotte Buff and Johann Christian Kestner, and on the 1772 suicide of Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, whose death stands behind \u003cem\u003eWerther's\u003c\/em\u003e. Yet the result was never simply a confession.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoethe later described its composition as almost \"somnabulistic\" (\u003cem\u003eDichtung und Wahrheit\u003c\/em\u003e, Bk. 13), and to Eckermann he gave the still more violent image, that \u003cem\u003eWerther\u003c\/em\u003e was \"a creation which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart\" (Eckermann, 2 January 1824).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat he had made from private experience was something more dangerous and more portable, a novel that allowed a generation to hear its own inwardness spoken aloud.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReleased at the Leipzig autumn fair in September 1774, the first edition sold out at once; Weygand reprinted it twice before the year was out, and within little more than a decade some twenty pirated editions had appeared in Germany alone, the surest measure of a demand the legitimate trade could not satisfy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReaders did not encounter \u003cem\u003eWerther\u003c\/em\u003e as an invented character only; they recognized in him a style of feeling, a costume, a posture toward the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdmiration was accompanied almost at once by alarm. Lessing, who had known Jerusalem and saw the force of the final allusion to \u003cem\u003eEmilia Galotti\u003c\/em\u003e, wanted the ending cooled down, made harder, less seductive (Lessing to Eschenburg, 26 October 1774).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn England the \u003cem\u003eGentleman's Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e reported the 1784 suicide of a Miss Glover, noting that \"The Sorrows of Werther were found under her pillow\" (Atkins, \u003cem\u003eThe Testament of Werther\u003c\/em\u003e, p. 40; Bell, \u003cem\u003eEarly American Literature\u003c\/em\u003e 46 (2011)). In France it entered the literature of sensibility almost at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNapoleon carried \u003cem\u003eWerther\u003c\/em\u003e through the Egyptian campaign and later told Goethe he had read it seven times [Jaeck 6] [Eckermann, 7 April 1829].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt Erfurt in 1808, when the conqueror of Europe finally met the author, he did not offer polite admiration only; he pressed Goethe on the construction of the plot, faulting one passage as untrue to nature, a judgement Goethe conceded was just (\u003cem\u003eAnnalen\u003c\/em\u003e, 1808).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe encounter is extraordinary for what it reveals, that by then \u003cem\u003eWerther\u003c\/em\u003e was no longer merely \"A German Story\" as it was called nearly thirty years earlier when the first English translation was released in London.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the beginning the novel was taken with extraordinary literalness. Young men took up Werther's own dress, the blue coat and yellow waistcoat, in what became known as \u003cem\u003eWerther fever\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book, with that style of dress, was banned in Leipzig in 1775, where the novel had first appeared; the theological faculty there having moved to suppress it at the start of that year, and it was banned in Denmark and Italy as well [Sauerland, \"Wertherfieber,\" EGO — Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte; Atkins, \u003cem\u003eThe Testament of Werther\u003c\/em\u003e, p. 40; Bell, \u003cem\u003eEarly American Literature\u003c\/em\u003e 46 (2011); \u003cem\u003eLancet Psychiatry\u003c\/em\u003e, 2014].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContemporaries also feared it would prompt imitative suicides. Whether it actually did so remains debated, the surviving evidence being largely anecdotal (\u003cem\u003eLancet Psychiatry\u003c\/em\u003e, 2014), but the fear proved lasting, and the phenomenon of copycat suicide eventually took its name from the book, the \"Werther effect,\" a term coined by the sociologist David Phillips in 1974 (Phillips, \u003cem\u003eAmerican Sociological Review\u003c\/em\u003e, 1974).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe novel was not simply read; it was carried into conduct, clothing and gesture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePROVENANCE\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Heribert Tenschert Collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eREFERENCES\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHagen 80; Goedeke IV\/3, 163, 1; Kippenberg I, 3039.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJ. P. Eckermann, \u003cem\u003eGespräche mit Goethe\u003c\/em\u003e; Goethe, \u003cem\u003eDichtung und Wahrheit\u003c\/em\u003e, Bk. 13, and \u003cem\u003eAnnalen\u003c\/em\u003e, 1808; R. M. Meyer, \u003cem\u003eGoethe\u003c\/em\u003e, I; \u003cem\u003eMonthly Review\u003c\/em\u003e, June 1785; \u003cem\u003eGentleman's Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e, November 1784; E. G. Jaeck, \u003cem\u003eMadame de Staël and the Spread of German Literature\u003c\/em\u003e (Oxford, 1915); G. Lukács, \u003cem\u003eGoethe and His Age\u003c\/em\u003e (Merlin Press, 1968); M. Swales, \u003cem\u003eGoethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther\u003c\/em\u003e (Cambridge, 1987); T. J. Reed, \u003cem\u003eThe Classical Centre\u003c\/em\u003e (Oxford, 1980); N. Boyle, \u003cem\u003eGoethe: The Poet and the Age\u003c\/em\u003e, I (Oxford, 1991); D. P. Phillips, \"The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide,\" \u003cem\u003eAmerican Sociological Review\u003c\/em\u003e 39 (1974); \"Goethe's \u003cem\u003eWerther\u003c\/em\u003e and its Effects,\" \u003cem\u003eLancet Psychiatry\u003c\/em\u003e (2014).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003ch3 dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFROM THE HERIBERT TENSCHERT COLLECTION\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46940091580604,"sku":null,"price":69000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0736\/1285\/3436\/files\/Werther_1774-1.png?v=1781131514","url":"https:\/\/atelierzweig.com\/products\/die-leiden-des-jungen-werthers-erster-und-zweiter-theil","provider":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}