Born: 10 January 1797, Germany
Died: 24 May 1848
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Baroness Anna Elisabeth Franziska Adolphine Wilhelmine Louise Maria von Droste zu Hülshoff
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, one of the most gifted and original of German women poets.
She received a more liberal education than in those days ordinarily fell to a woman’s lot, but after some years spent among the intellectual circles at Coblenz, Bonn and Cologne, she retired to the family castle, and passed her life largely in seclusion.
As a lyric poet, she holds a high place, and her narrative poetry belongs to the best of its kind.
She was a strict Roman Catholic, and her religious poems, published in 1852, after her death, enjoyed great popularity.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Her poems, collected and signed with her full name, were printed by Cotta in 1844 . Born and continuing to reside in her parent’s own villa, “Hulshoff,” near Munster in Westphalia, she was inspired by the beautiful surroundings; her best descriptive poetic literature is about her homeland. In the last year of her life she published seventy-two songs, entitled The Spiritual Year, containing a song for every Sunday and every religious holiday. She was a master in writing folk lore, history and legend in rhyme. Her only completed prose work, The Youthtree, is a splendid novel dealing with the strange and mystic powers of lonely villages and with the secret, hidden spirits that inhabit prairies and forests.