German Romanticism has long enjoyed the distinction of having included many prominent women in its fold, from the tragically melancholic poetess Caroline von Günderode to the great conversationalists Rahel Levin and Bettina von Arnim. As the wife of Friedrich Schlegel, German Romanticism's founding father, Dorothea Schlegel naturally occupied an important position among her notable sisters. Yet in spite of her many personal contacts and her considerable literary productivity, Dorothea Schlegel has to this day remained a curiously neglected figure. Her devout subservience to the genius of Friedrich Schlegel--a subservience which accounts for her willingness to have all her books published under her husband's name or auspices--and the unhealthy influence which she is said to have exercised on his growing religious bigotry have not helped to endear her to contemporary critics and thus leave her one of the last preeminent women of that period to await reappraisal...