Best known in the history of German literature for his friendship with the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Levin Schücking is a literary figure in his own right. Schücking, who gave up a career in journalism to pursue his literary ambitions full-time, wrote more than thirty novels and many novellas, as well as dramas and lyric poetry. He also wrote travel literature, mostly about his native Westphalia. He was an active and highly esteemed member of the German literary community and had contacts with such major nineteenth-century German authors as Ferdinand Freiligrath, Karl Gutzkow, and Heinrich Heine. For a writer he led a rather placid life; he suffered few privations after his early years, since he was able to earn a more than adequate living by his pen.

The Schücking family can be traced back to the fourteenth century in Westphalia...