In her lifetime Luise Mühlbach was one of Germany's best-loved female authors; whatever the quality of her books, they certainly achieved enormous popularity among the nontraditional readers who patronized private lending libraries. In addition to the historical novels for which she is remembered, Mühlbach also wrote more than a dozen works that can be compared to the social novels of Junges Deutschland (Young Germany) and several volumes of travel literature. Besides shaping the German historical novel and disseminating a personalized and popularized form of historical knowledge, Mühlbach was also an early and forceful advocate of women's emancipation.

Her novels normally appeared in editions of fifteen hundred to five thousand copies, depending on whether the publisher decided to print a small, expensive edition or a popularly priced edition that would appeal to the lending libraries that were the most important purveyors of culture...