In mid-nineteenth-century German literature, with its trend toward increasingly realistic fiction, Otto Ludwig occupies an important position both as a creative writer and a literary theorist. He is especially notable for his use of the term Poetischer Realismus (Poetic Realism), by which the dominant literary style of the period has come to be known. His realism, like that of many other regional writers of his time, represents a conservative rearguard action fought in defense of traditional moral and social values by middle-class authors; and in Ludwig's work, which has enjoyed a fluctuating critical reception, it is possible to observe clearly the ideological tensions of the age and the aesthetic transition from romanticism to realism. His work, uneven in quality and much of it fragmentary, has been compared at its best to that of Henrik Ibsen and Fyodor Dostoyevski in its rigorously realistic psychology, while at its worst it...