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Wilhelm, the son of a prosperous merchant, dreams of the theatre and leaves home to join a troupe of travelling actors. Through love affairs, failed productions, a staging of Hamlet and the mysterious figures of the girl Mignon and the old Harper, he slowly learns that the life he imagined is not the one he is meant to lead.
Context and significance
Published in 1795 and 1796, this is the novel that defined the Bildungsroman, the story of a young person's education by life, a form later used by Dickens, Joyce and many others; Thomas Carlyle's translation brought it to English readers. Mignon's song 'Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom?' became one of the most set poems in German music.
About the author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was born in Frankfurt and trained as a lawyer, but at twenty-four his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther made him famous across Europe. Invited to the small court of Weimar, he served as a minister for years while writing poems, plays and novels, and pursuing serious research in botany, anatomy and the theory of colour.
His friendship with the poet Schiller and his journey to Italy shaped German classicism, and his Faust, the work of sixty years, is the summit of German literature. Goethe admired the Persian poet Hafez and the Quran, and his West-Eastern Divan was an early bridge between European and Islamic poetry.