»Ganz Deutschland beschäftigte sich mit dem Buche«

The article is dedicated to Gabriele Reuter’s successful novel Aus guter Familie. Leidensgeschichte eines Mädchens (1896). On the basis of two contemporary reviews, it is shown that the popular novel was read and evaluated on the one hand as socio-critical literature and on the other hand as an autonomous work of art. The depopularization that has been observed thirty years after its publication is related to the enforcement of the socio-critical interpretation, which leads to the fact that the novel is historically appreciated as a contribution to the successful emancipation of women and at the same time aesthetically disqualified as a paradigm of »women’s literature«.