Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther)

The Leipzig 1774 German original is the true first; everything else is a translation or a later authorial revision. The title itself is a precedence point: the 1774 first edition reads 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers' with the genitive -s, while Goethe's substantially revised second version (Göschen, Leipzig, 1787) drops it to 'Leiden des jungen Werther' and is a different text, not a reprint. The first edition in English — 'The Sorrows of Werter: A German Story' (London: printed for J. Dodsley, 1779), two volumes in one — was made from a French intermediary rather than from Goethe's German, and is attributed to Daniel Malthus, though Richard Graves has also been proposed; it is collected as the first edition in English, not as a first edition of the work.