I am producing a series of E-versions of
"Die Leiden des jungen Werthers," by Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (1749-1832).

There are two editions of "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers."  The first
editon was originally published in 1774; the second edition, in 1787.  The
second edition is perhaps best considered an act of acquiesence to conventional
social norms.  The first edition is generally regarded to be superior to the
second.

Both of these editions have appeared in many variations over the years, even
while Goethe himself was still alive.  Because of the printing practices of the
day, I wouldn't be surprized to find out that it is even the case that no two
surviving copies of the very first print run of the first edition are
identical.

So far two E-versions are ready for distribution:

1774.txt

This is a text file.  It is coded in UTF-8.  It attempts to reproduce as closely
as possible the very first printing of the first edition.  It is based on the
copy in Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München
(The Bavarian State Library, Munich).

The original version of "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" was typeset in
Breitkopf Fraktur, but there were five places in the orginal in which foreign
words were set in antiqua; none of these words was a single character, and I
have indicated them by rendering them in all-upper-case letters.

The original employed different characters for hyphens and dashes; this file
uses the same character for both, but this results in no ambiguity, since in
this file a letter always immediately precedes a hyphen, whereas a letter never
immediately precedes a dash.

The original contained initials and a number of figures. I have indicated them
with blocks of |, <, or >.  Identical figures in the original are indicated with
identical blocks in the file.  Some figures in the orginal are upside-down
versions of each other; such figures are rendered with blocks that are
upside-down versions of each other in the file.

1774.pdf

This is a Portable Document Format (PDF) file.  It was typeset in
the AMS-LaTeX computer typesetting system, which includes a Breitkopf Fraktur
font and initials.  This file is based on the same copy of
"Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" as 1774.txt is based on.

AMS-LaTex cannot in any reasonable way exactly reproduce the original, but it
can get close, and I have attempted to do so.  The Breitkopf of AMS-LaTeX is
not exactly the same as that of the original, but at least it is a Breitkopf,
and a nice one at that.  The initials of AMS-LaTeX are not at all the same as
those of the orginal, but at least they are initials, and very nice ones, too.
The figures of the original are rendered only as frame boxes; different figures
are rendered as different frame boxes; upside-down figures are rendered as
upside-down frame boxes.

Versions in progress:

1787.txt

For the second edition.

1774.html
1787.html

For a parallel version of the two editions.