Ernst Willkomm was, until the 1860s, one of Germany's most popular authors. He faded rapidly into obscurity, and it was not until the reemergence of interest in the nineteenth-century social novel during the 1970s that this "schlimmste Vielschreiber seiner Zeit" (most excessively prolific hack of his day)--as Heinrich Schauerte calls him--whose work had been out of print for well over half a century, received new attention. Despite a certain brief scholarly interest, especially in Eisen, Gold und Geist (Iron, Gold, and Spirit, 1843) and Weiße Sclaven oder Die Leiden des Volkes (White Slavery; or, The Suffering of the People, 1845), no new editions of any of his works were published. None of his writings has been translated into English.

Willkomm's early socially critical writings--Civilisationsnovellen (Novellas on the Theme of [European] Civilization, 1837), Die Europamüden (Tired of Europe, 1838), and his two social novels written during the...