A member of two important literary societies, the Tunnel über der Spree in Berlin and Die Krokodile in Munich, he wrote novels, poetry, 177 short stories, and about sixty dramas.

He was awarded the 1910 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories."

His family connections gained him early entry to the artistic circles of Berlin, where he made the acquaintance of Emanuel Geibel, a man fifteen years his elder who was to become his literary mentor and lifelong friend, and who introduced him to his future father-in-law, the art historian and writer Franz Kugler.

In 1850, he finally resolved on a career as a writer and began a dissertation under the supervision of Friedrich Diez, a pioneer of Romance philology in Germany; but when it was discovered he was conducting an affair with the wife of one of his professors he was sent back to Berlin.

In 1851, Heyse won a contest held by the members of the "Tunnel" for the ballad Das Tal von Espigno, and his first short story, "Marion" (1852), was similarly honoured.

Several members of the "Tunnel" began to find its formalities and public nature distasteful, and a smaller circle, the Rütli, was formed in December 1852: it included Kugler, Lepel, Fontane, Storm, and Heyse.

He made friends with Arnold Böcklin and Joseph Victor von Scheffel but was banned from the Vatican library after being discovered copying passages from unpublished manuscripts.

At his first audience with the King, Heyse presented his verse tales, Hermen, and began a productive life as one of the Nordlichtern ("northern lights": Geibel, Heyse and Riehl) and establishing another literary society, Die Krokodile, which included Felix Dahn, Wilhelm Hertz, Hermann Lingg, Franz von Kobell, the cultural historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Friedrich Bodenstedt, and the travel writer and art patron Adolf Friedrich von Schack.

In 1859, obligations to the Kugler family led Heyse to take up a position as editor of the Literaturblatt zum deutschen Kunstblatt, and he declined a tempting offer from the Grand Duke Carl Alexander von Weimar which would have involved moving to Thuringia.

He completed the historical drama, Ludwig der Bayer – a Bavarian period piece which Maximilian II had long been eager to see – but its theatrical production was a failure.

[4] In 1900, he was named an honorary citizen of Munich, and several special publications honoured his 70th birthday; and in 1910, he was made a member of the nobility, before being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 10 December.