In an article for the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, Francis Joste wrote, "The fame of the poetess rests chiefly on her lyric poems, her pastorales, and her ballads.

Her father Clemens August von Droste zu Hülshoff (1760–1826) was a learned man who was interested in ancient history and languages, ornithology, botany, music and the supernatural.

Annette was the second of four children: she had an elder sister Maria Anna (nicknamed "Jenny", 1795–1859) and two younger brothers, Werner Konstantin (1798–1867) and Ferdinand (1800–1829).

[9] Droste's maternal grandfather, Baron Werner Adolf von Haxthausen, had remarried after the death of Annette's grandmother in 1772 and built himself a new castle, Schloss Bökerhof, in the village of Bökendorf, Paderborn.

They were in contact with such celebrated cultural figures as the Brothers Grimm, Clemens Brentano, Friedrich Schlegel, Adele and Johanna Schopenhauer.

Here she became romantically involved with Heinrich Straube (1794–1847), a Lutheran law student with literary interests, who was a friend of her uncle Baron August von Haxthausen.

For this reason, the Baroness von Haxthausen masterminded a society intrigue intended to destroy the relationship in a very public manner.

At first flattered by von Arnswaldt's attentions, Annette gave some indications she was in love with him, before telling him she was committed to Heinrich Straube.

[12] Droste's earliest poems are derivative and conventional but in 1820 her work began to show marked originality when she embarked on a cycle of Christian poetry, Das geistliche Jahr ("The Spiritual Year").

Droste intended to write one poem for each Sunday and Feast Day of the church year and the cycle was meant as a gift to her devout grandmother, but when Droste had completed 25 poems, she realised they showed too many traces of major depression and spiritual doubt, so she shelved the work until 1839 when a friend persuaded her to complete the series.

In 1834 her sister Jenny married Baron Joseph von Laßberg, an important collector, editor, and publisher of medieval Middle High German epic poetry.

The following summer, Annette and her mother travelled to visit Baron von Laßberg's estate of Schloss Eppishausen in the Swiss Alps.

She was inspired by the scenery and easily befriended her brother in law, but neither he nor his friends shared her interest in modern German poetry and Droste's hopes that the Baron might publish her work came to nothing.

[20] Schücking had also published an admiring review of Droste's poetry collection and sought her help in writing his own book, Das malerische und romantische Westfalen ("Picturesque and Romantic Westphalia", 1840).

In the winter of 1840—1841 she wrote her famous novella Die Judenbuche (The Jew's Beech, published 1842), inspired by a real murder near Bökerhof in the late 18th century.

Droste disagreed: she had no problem composing poetry in her head but had difficulty writing it down and the failure of her first book had not encouraged her to make the effort.

Important poems from her last years include "Mondesaufgang" ("Moonrise"), "Durchwachte Nacht" ("Sleepless Night") and "Im Grase" ("In the Grass").

[26] The profits from her book had helped Droste to buy a small vine-covered villa known as Fürstenhäusle in Meersburg, while renovating the house, she lived in her brother in law's Schloss from 1846 until her death in May 1848, probably from tuberculosis.

She shares with the Romantic writers an awareness of the power of man's imagination and a keen sense of his exposed and precarious position in a world of danger and mystery.

Her keen sensory perception and her precise recording of phenomena make her appear as a herald of the new realistic literature of the latter part of the century.

With her unusual combination of imaginative vision with close accurate observation and depiction of reality, she thus stands at the point of transition between Romanticism and Realism and does not belong wholly to either.

In 1821, she was given a composition manual,[citation needed] Einige Erklärungen über den General-Baß, written by her uncle Maximilian-Friedrich von Droste zu Hülshoff (a friend of Joseph Haydn).