Ida Gräfin von Hahn-Hahn was one of the most prolific and widely read novelists of the nineteenth century. She is significant mainly for her early works, which present shockingly unconventional heroines. She rejected the female models prescribed by eighteenth-century writers (especially Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) and left the romantic male fantasies of the "perfect" woman far behind. She dared to fashion a strong and self-directed female figure--usually considered "a monster"--into a heroine. The novels are populated mainly with people from her own aristocratic milieu but do not include actual social and political phenomena of her time. Rather, her novels focus on timeless gender issues, and she attempts a sociopsychological analysis of power relationships between men and women in her society. Her travel accounts are also noteworthy: she attempts to understand people within their own environments and daily experiences, and she was the first writer to...