[2] Caroline's closest confidante in the early years of her marriage was her cousin Wilhelm von Wolzogen, who, in 1785, introduced her and her sister to his friend Schiller, then a young and rather poor Weimar poet.

[4] In the early 1790s, inspired by her friendship with Schiller and other literary figures in Weimar, Caroline began writing herself; her first substantial work was a dramatic fragment in classical form, Der leukadische Fels, in 1792.

A meeting with a much older and wealthier man, with whom she falls in love, begins a process of discovery of the world at large, including the politics and scandals of court life.

"[5] In 1795, Schiller began a new periodical called Die Horen, which would contain articles on philosophy and history as well as fiction, organized around the central tenets of Weimar classicism.

Knowing his sister-in-law was writing, Schiller asked for a submission, and Agnes von Lilien was published anonymously in Die Horen in installments, from 1796 to 1797.

Her family, including Schiller, responded negatively to this decision, and she and von Wolzogen spent the next two years removed from their relations, primarily in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland.

[7] After Schiller's death in 1805 and the subsequent growth of his literary reputation, Caroline von Wolzogen began collecting correspondence and reminiscences of her and her sister's life with the poet.

In the biography, Caroline depicted her subject as a man continually beset by illness and dying young, but whose determination to carry on with his literary efforts nonetheless is cast as heroic.