Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly is Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford and Professor of German Literature, Oxford. Her publications include Triumphal Shews. Tournaments at German-Speaking Courts in their European Context 1560-1730 (1992), Court Culture in Dresden from Renaissance to Baroque (2002) and The Cambridge History of German Literature (1997), which she edited, and translations of Friedrich Schiller's On the Naive and Sentimental in Literature (1981) and Adalbert Stifter's Brigitta and Other Tales (1989 and 1994). From 2005-2008 she co-directed the AHRC Major Research Project Representations of Women and Death in German Literature, Art and Media 1500 to the present. She is editor of German Life and Letters, the foremost UK German studies journal, and of the German early modern journal Daphnis. Zeitschrift fur mittlere deutsche Kultur.

"Undoubtedly, Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly has performed a great service by launching this debate in such broad and yet detailed terms. Her book simulates and deserves to be widely red, its arguments further discussed." --Monatshefte

"Erudite, eloquent...A very informative study. Highly recommended." --Choice