After Frederick the Great, Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, was probably the highest-ranking member of the German nobility to be touched by the muses. A ruling prince who was connected through politics and family ties with some of the great royal houses of Europe--he was the great-grandfather of Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, as well as grandfather-in-law of Alexei, son of Czar Peter the Great of Russia--he followed in his father's footsteps as a patron of the arts, a book collector, and a builder of castles. He was also the author of plays and ballets, religious hymns, and two of the greatest of the so-called courtly-historical novels written in Germany. A master of narrative prose, he may be considered the bridge between the florid, bombastic style of the high baroque and the more intricate and delicate art of the literary...