Ernst Eckstein

Ernst Eckstein (1845–1900) was a German writer born in Giessen who studied classical philology and traveled in Italy, Spain and France before settling in Leipzig and then Dresden as a journalist and editor. He first became known for comic tales of school life, among them Der Besuch im Carcer, and then for a series of large historical novels of imperial Rome, Quintus Claudius in 1881, Prusias, Nero and Aphrodite, which were translated into English by Clara Bell and others and sold widely in the United States. He also wrote contemporary novels and essays. His Roman books belong with the fashion that produced Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis.