A Concert of Werthers

British literature of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries is replete with literary characters who read Werther. Just a fifty-year sampling following Werther's publication demonstrates that characters in some of the most widely read British authors, from Herbert Croft, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Smith, William Godwin, Jane Austen, to Sydney Owenson, quote from or allude to Werther. Werther's most famous contemporary extended citation and analysis may occur in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Goethe's novel and title character serve as a source of contemporary artistic material and literary inspiration. To reconsider Werther's role in these well known and under-read texts is to reexamine the novel's importance within contemporary British fiction.