(a) One version or two?

According to Goethe's own account, Werther was written in four weeks. It appeared anonymously in Leipzig under the imprint of Weygand (although the catalogue of the Book Fair revealed the authorship) in 1774. Two reprints from the same publisher followed in the same year. In 1775 Weygand produced a ‘second genuine edition’ whose most important additions were verse mottos which preceded both the first and the second book of the novel. The prefatory poem to the second book is explicit in warning against the seduction of Werther's catastrophic end:

The success of the novel was so great that reprints and pirated editions came thick and fast. Of these the most important was that which appeared from Himburg in Berlin. In 1775 he produced J. W. Goethe's Works, without the author's permission, the first part of which contained Werther. The text had been slightly modified – certain dialect expressions had, for example, been changed to conform with Berlin usage. In 1777 and 1779 Himburg re-issued the Works, and the number of modifications (to say nothing of misprints) increased.