Emmy von Rhoden

Emmy von Rhoden was the pen name of Emilie Auguste Karoline Henriette Friedrich-Friedrich, born Kühne, a German writer who was born in Magdeburg on 15 November 1829 and died in Dresden on 7 April 1885. She is best known for the novel Der Trotzkopf, published in 1885, which stands as one of the prototypes of the Backfischroman, the German genre of novels about adolescent girls, and is regarded as an international classic of children's literature. Earlier she had published Das Musikantenkind and Lenchen Braun, both in 1883. The Trotzkopf series was a large commercial success in Germany and was translated into at least eleven languages, helped by the marketing of the Stuttgart publisher Gustav Weise. Her daughter, the writer Else Wildhagen, continued the series with two sequels. English readers met the book as Taming a Tomboy and as An Obstinate Maid, both in 1898.