Johann Wolfgang von Goethe failed to publish Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . During this period , Goethe published his second novel , Wilhelm Meister 's Apprenticeship , the verse epic Hermann and Dorothea , and , in 1808 , the first part of his most celebrated drama , Faust . Arthur Schopenhauer cited Wilhelm Meister 's Apprenticeship as one of the four greatest novels ever written , along with Tristram Shandy , La Nouvelle Héloïse , and Don Quixote , and Ralph Waldo Emerson selected Goethe as one of six `` representative men '' in his work of the same name , along with Plato , Emanuel Swedenborg , Michel de Montaigne , Napoleon , and William Shakespeare . Wilhelm Meister 's Apprenticeship ( Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre ) is the second novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , published in 1795 -- 96 .