David Constantine is a poet, novelist, and short-story writer who taught German language and literature at Durham and then Queen's College, Oxford. His most recent poetry collection is Nine Fathoms Deep (2009), and his most recent volulme of short stories, The Shieling (2009). He has translated Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist, and Brecht: Goethe's Faust, Part 1 and Part 2 for Penguin and Elective Affinities for Oxford World's Classics. In 2010 he won the BBC National Short Story Award. With his wife Helen he edits Modern Poetry in Translation.

Drawing on his own unhappy experiences, Goethe's account of Werther's passionate love for Lotte, who is promised to another, is one of the first great Romantic tragic novels. David Constantine's new translation captures the novel's lyric intensity, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes that illuminate Goethe's achievement.