The Sorrows of Young Werther - Alternative Versions and Other Appearances

Alternative Versions and Other Appearances

• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Frankenstein's monster finds the book in a leather portmanteau, along with two others—Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, and Milton's Paradise Lost. He sees Werther's case as similar to his own. He, like Werther, was rejected by those he loved.
• The statistician Karl Pearson's first book was The New Werther.
• It was the basis for the 1892 opera Werther by Jules Massenet.
• William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a poem satirizing Goethe's story entitled Sorrows of Werther.
• Thomas Mann's 1939 novel Lotte in Weimar recounts a fictional reunion between Goethe and the object of his youthful passion, Charlotte Buff.
• An episode of History Bites features this book, with Bob Bainborough portraying Goethe.
• Ulrich Plenzdorf, a GDR poet, wrote a novel and a play called Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. ("The New Sorrows of Young W."). It has been called a modern-day Werther.
• In William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, the novel appears next to Harrington's unsealed suicide note.
• The 2010 German film Goethe! is a fictional account of the relationship between the young Goethe and Charlotte Buff and her fiancé Kestner, which at times draws on that between Werther and Charlotte and Albert.