Later Years
At the age of 57 Fontane finally worked in the genre for which he is remembered, the novel. His fine historical romance Vor dem Sturm (1878) was followed by a series of novels of modern life, notably L'Adultera (1882), a book about adultery which was considered so risqué that it took Fontane two years to find a publisher.
In his novels Frau Jenny Treibel; Irrungen, Wirrungen; and Effi Briest (1894), he found his very own tone, yielding insights into the lives of the nobility as well as the "common man". His achievement there was later described as poetic realism. In Der Stechlin (1899), his last completed novel, Fontane adapted the realistic methods and social criticism of contemporary French fiction to the conditions of Prussian life.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Where has it all gone? I remember that twenty years ago there were geese and cranes and ducks and grouse here, clouds of them!... And there are far fewer animals. Wolf and fox are rare, brother, not to mention bears or mink. There used even to be moose!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)