Sophie von La Roche, the first recognized and acclaimed woman novelist in Germany, was both a pioneer in the establishment of an independent women's literary public and a conservative monarchist opposed to full independence for women. The contradictions in her literary and personal lives reflect those of her era. Born into a wealthy doctor's family and thus by birth a member of the bourgeoisie, she married into court life. A devout Pietist from Swabia whose father forbade her marriage to a Catholic, she sent her daughters to a convent school and married her children off across religious lines. The sentimental novelist par excellence, she rejected the love match as a basis for marriage and tried to arrange financially advantageous situations for her children. A member of the nobility, she became a widow with no pension who used her writings to support herself and her children. She spoke and...