Upon its publication in 1796, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship* gained an instant following. Goethe's sensitive exploration of the mind, moral, and sexual education of a young artist at odds with society has had a tremendous influence on the history of the German novel. Told as a succession of vignettes about the life of a young man in love, we follow young Wilhelm from his life as a theater-obsessed young bourgeois through his adventures and misadventures with the stage, and finally to his entr