The American Cyclopædia (1879)/John, Eugenie

JOHN, Eugenie, a German novelist, popularly known under the nom de plume of E. Marlitt, born at Arnstadt, Thuringia, Dec. 5, 1825.

She is the daughter of a painter, and on account of her fine voice was adopted in 1841 by the princess Matilda of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, who had her educated, and enabled her to study music in Vienna during three years. She then appeared on the stage, but a sudden deafness made her return to Sondershausen as a companion of the princess. Her correspondents, struck with her attractive style, encouraged her to write novels, for which purpose she returned to Arnstadt in 1863. Her first work, Die Zwölf Apostel, appeared in the Leipsic Gartenlaube in 1865. She acquired celebrity in 1866 by her graphic and poetic delineations of German life in Goldelse; and in the same year she published Blaubart. Her subsequent works are Das Geheimniss der alten Mamsell (1867), Reichsgräfin Gisela (1869), Das Haideprinzesschen (1871), and Die zweite Frau (1874). Many of them have been translated into English by Mrs. Wister of Philadelphia.