Emmy von Rhoden

Born Emilie Auguste Karoline Kühne in 1832, she wrote under the pen name Emmy von Rhoden. She is most closely associated with Der Trotzkopf (published in 1885), a novel that became widely popular in Germany and remained her best-known work.

Emmy von Rhoden spent much of her life in the world of educated middle-class German family life that her fiction often reflects. Her writing is remembered for spirited young heroines, domestic settings, and a readable, engaging style that made her books especially popular with younger readers.

She died in 1885, the same year Der Trotzkopf appeared. Although much of her reputation rests on that single novel, its long afterlife in German-language children's and young adult reading has made her a lasting name in 19th-century literature.