"The Sorrows of Young Werther" is the 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Goethe. A loosely autobiographical novel, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" tells the story of its title character, an artist with a highly sensitive and passionate temperament who falls in love with Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is promised to another in the fictional village of Wahlheim. A classic and tragic love story, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" established Goethe as an international literary celebrity and heavily influenced later Romantic works.