Epistolary novel
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An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse other kinds of fictional docu
Young Werther's love interest hands over the fatal instrument for his suicide, the climax of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther
Title page of Aphra Behn's early epistolary novel, Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684)
Title page of the second edition of Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), a bestselling early epistolary novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther
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The Sorrows of Young Werther, or simply Werther, is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the Sturm und Drang
Epistolary novel
…great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werther) (1774) and Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion. The first Canadian novel, The History of Emily Montague (1769) by Frances…
First print 1774
Charlotte at Werther's grave. This scene is not in the novel.
Goethe portrait in profile
Colored engraving of Werther and Lotte