Writing the Self, Creating Community: German Women Authors and the Literary Sphere, 1750-1850 (Women and Gender in German Studies, 4)

Beginning in the 1770s, the German literary market experienced unprecedented growth. The enormous demand for reading materials that accompanied this burgeoning market created new opportunities for women writers. At the same time, they still faced numerous obstacles. The new opportunities and limitations imposed on women writers are the subject of this book. The eleven essays contained within look beyond the negative strategies women writers employed, such as hiding their intellectual accomplishments or legitimizing their works by subordinating them to non-artistic purposes. Instead, they ask how women wrote about their own creative processes both directly, for example, by sketching a female poetology, and indirectly, through literary representations of female authorship. This volume examines concepts of female authorship as they are presented in women's correspondence, theoretical statements, and literary works. The contributors bring to life the collaborative literary world of female writers through explorations of familial and professional mentorships, salons, writing circles, and their correspondences. They consider how female authors positioned themselves within contemporary intellectual discourses, and analyze the tropes that shaped ideas about their authorship, throughout the emerging literary marketplace of eighteenth century Europe.Elisabeth Krimmer is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis, and Lauren Nossett is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Randolph-Macon College.