The Sorrows of Young Werther

Werther is young, gifted, and feels everything at maximum intensity, spring meadows, Homer, village children, and then, fatally, Lotte, whom he meets cutting bread for her younger siblings and cannot thereafter un-meet. She is promised to Albert: decent, steady, and everything Werther is not. What follows, told almost entirely through Werther's own letters, is the slow-motion record of an obsession, rapturous at first, then increasingly unable to find anywhere for itself to live.

Goethe wrote it at twenty-four, drawing on his own bruises, and it made him famous overnight: young men across Europe dressed in Werther's blue coat and yellow waistcoat, and the book was blamed (and banned) for the mania it inspired. Two and a half centuries later it remains the definitive anatomy of loving someone you cannot have, compact enough to hear in a few sittings and uncomfortably easy to recognize yourself in.

At roughly 43,300 words, The Sorrows of Young Werther runs about 5 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The Sorrows of Young Werther is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “The Sorrows of Young Werther” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.