Wilhelm Meinholds Gothic romance Maria Schweidler: Die Bernsteinhexe (1844) was a seminal German text in the literary landscape of Victorian England. The 1846 English translation by Lady Duff Gordon, entitled The Amber Witch, enjoyed widespread popular success, and Meinholds suspenseful tale of a guileless young woman, unjustly accused of witchcraft, was hailed as the leading German novel of its day. Written in the style of a seventeenth-century chronicle, the story appealed to a readership which identified in Meinholds work echoes of Daniel Defoe, Oliver Goldsmith and Walter Scott.
This...