First published on the eve of the First World War, Keyserling's masterpiece offers a vivid portrait of a social world on the verge of dissolution. Gary Miller's new translation will find a new generation of readers for this neglected German classic. A collection of German aristocrats gathers at a seaside village on the Baltic Sea for a summer holiday in the early years of the twentieth century. The characters represent a sort of cross-section of the upper classes of imperial Germany: a philandering baron, his jealous wife, a gallant cavalry officer, the elderly widow of a general, a cynical government official, a lady's companion. Their lives, even on holiday, are regulated by rigid protocol and archaic codes of honour. But their quiet, disciplined world is thrown into disarray by the unexpected presence of Doralice, a young countess who has rebelled against social constraints by escaping from an arranged marriage and running away with a bourgeois artist. AUTHOR: Eduard von Keyserling(1855-1918) was a Baltic German novelist and playwright. His earlier novels were influenced by Naturalism. The later novels are more finely nuanced. Most of his novels are suffused with a certain melancholy and usually feature a clash of the generations. His fiction after 1902, places Keyserling at the forefront of German literary impressionism.