Louise von Gall was one of many authors in the nineteenth century who were judged by the critics to be producers of Trivialliteratur or Unterhaltungsromane (light novels). But some of these authors dealt with matters in need of urgent attention: the arrival of the machine and its impact on society and the economy, the need for political reform and national unity, social injustice and the role of women within and outside the family. Such issues were not given prominence in the "classical" literature of mid-nineteenth-century Germany.

On her father's side Gall came from a long line of aristocrats who for centuries had given military service to their princes. Her grandfather Wilhelm von Gall, commanded a corps of Hessians under Lord William Howe in the American Revolution; her grandson, Walther Schücking, would be a distinguished lawyer and pacifist, a delegate at the treaty negotiations in Versailles in...