Eva Maaser Die Astronomin (The Lady Astronomer) Rütten & Loening, February 2004. 444 pp. ISBN 3-352-00707-1 Famous families can be a handicap – even to other distinguished members of them. Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) is a case in point. An able astronomer in her own right, honoured by King George III of England and his royal counterparts in Prussia, invited to discuss her work at the Royal Astronomical Society and on terms of friendship with the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, she had many difficulties to overcome in her own time, as was often then the lot of clever, non-aristocratic women. Most of all she was, and to some extent still is, eclipsed, by her brother William (1738-1822), the discoverer of Uranus, and her nephew John Frederick William, whose main work was done in Capetown, South Africa. And then there were her other brothers, the astronomers Alexander and Dietrich, and, finally, Jacob, who directed the family’s musical work; for the Herschels, starting with their father Isaac and mother Ilse, began their careers as gifted professional musicians. So how did Caroline steer her own desired path? In answering this question, and elevating the quiet lady of astronomy to the place where she belongs, the novelist Eva Maaser has drawn on her subject’s own memoirs, unravelling the complexities and ‘mysteries’ of Caroline’s life with the subtlety and skills of a first-class detective story writer. The voice, drawn straight from the memoirs, is that of a practical woman, who at every stage responded as best she might to the situation around her, from early hardships to the discovery of interests and talents she could not easily suppress. Embroidering on the biographical material, Maaser describes how Caroline gradually acquired the formidable toughness, mental and physical (she lived to be ninety-eight), which enabled her to maintain herself and her ambitions both with and against her family and society. Hers was a bleak and yet also a remarkably fulfilled existence, and Maaser’s fascinating, historically sound and highly sympathetic novel shows both what formed this exceptionally gifted woman and what she herself created and formed.