The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774; revised 1787) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a short, mostly epistolary work of elevated emotion of the German Sturm und Drung period that later evolves into Romanticism.

Honorable and sensitive young Werther literally perishes from a love that can never be, a love for a married young woman, and writes his agonized letter diary to a friend, describing in tragic emotional detail his experiences.