I recently composed three sonatas for the piano-playing young. The pieces level of difficulty progresses gradually from the very simple to the complex. (...) This is something completely different from the Album (fort he Young). One must also familiarize the young with the execution of larger pieces, which is what the pieces are for. Incidentally, I have rounded off the movements of the sonatas in such a way that they can also be printed as single pieces.
(Robert Schumann to the publisher Julius Schuberth, July 15 and 21, 1853)

The present edition is based on the music text of the Gesamtausgabe of Robert Schumanns works, edited by Clara Schumann together with Johannes Brahms and others between 1879 und 1893. This publication is almost entirely free from arbitrary alterations in the text. A few obvious errors were eliminated after a thorough comparison with the first edition.