Two novellas
By: Theodor Fontane ; translated, with notes, by Gabriele Annan ; and with an introduction by Erich Heller.
Contributors: Annan, Gabriele.; Fontane, Theodor, 1819-1898.
Series: Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1995
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Description: Fontane's novella The Woman Taken in Adultery (1882) is remarkable not least for its portrayal, in wealthy, stultifying Berlin society in the 1880s, of an adultery with a happy ending. The story was inspired by a celebrated contemporary scandal and tells of Melanie van der Straaten and her affair with Rubehn, the young protege of Melanie's eccentric and good-humoured husband Ezel.

By contrast The Poggenpuhl Family (1896), a late masterpiece, centres on a birthday party given for Frau von Poggenpuhl and brilliantly evokes the lives of an aristocratic Berlin family struggling in genteel poverty. Theodor Fontane is one of nineteenth-century Germany's foremost stylists, and in these two short fictions his vivid portraiture and unforced dialogue, his mastery of understatement and emotional nuance are found to perfection.
Table of contents: title: The woman taken in adultery; title: The Poggenpuhl family.