author
Gabriele Reuter
1859–1941
A bestselling German novelist in her own day, she wrote sharp, emotionally rich fiction about the limits placed on women in bourgeois society. Her best-known book, From a Good Family, became one of the notable literary portraits of a young woman’s struggle in the Wilhelmine era.
2 Audiobooks
Was Helmut in Deutschland erlebte: Eine Jugendgeschichte
by Gabriele Reuter
Ins neue Land
by Gabriele Reuter
About the author
Born on February 8, 1859, in Alexandria, Egypt, Gabriele Reuter grew up between cultures and went on to become a well-known German writer. She was especially admired for her psychological insight and for the seriousness with which she treated women's inner lives.
Her breakthrough came with Aus guter Familie (From a Good Family, 1895), a novel about a young woman trapped by the expectations of respectable middle-class society. The book was widely read and helped establish her reputation as an important voice in discussions of women's experience around the turn of the century.
Reuter continued to publish novels, stories, and memoirs over many decades. Though she is less famous today than she was during her lifetime, her work remains a valuable window into the pressures of gender, class, and social convention in late 19th- and early 20th-century Germany.