Theodor Fontane (1819-98) was born in a small Prussian town. He worked for most of his life as a journalist, and spent many years in London as a foreign correspondent for the Prussian intelligence agency. He began writing novels at the age of fifty-seven, and these works earned him an enduring reputation in German letters. Several of his realist masterpieces are published or forthcoming from Pushkin Press, including No Way Back, On Tangled Paths and his masterpiece Effi Briest.

Stanley Radcliffe was for many years Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Bristol. He has written extensively on 19th-century German fiction and as well as work by Theodor Fontane he has translated the novellas of Gerhart Hauptmann.