Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany

Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity

Linda Hughes

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781316512845
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009080040
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Shedding new light on the alternative, emancipatory Germany discovered and written about by progressive women writers during the long nineteenth century, this illuminating study uncovers a country that offered a degree of freedom and intellectual agency unheard of in England. Opening with the striking account of Anna Jameson and her friendship with Ottilie von Goethe, Linda K. Hughes shows how cultural differences spurred ten writers' advocacy of progressive ideas and provided fresh materials for publishing careers. Alongside well-known writers – Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Michael Field, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Vernon Lee – this study sheds light on the lesser-known writers Mary and Anna Mary Howitt, Jessie Fothergill, and the important Anglo-Jewish lesbian writer Amy Levy. Armed with their knowledge of the German language, each of these women championed an extraordinarily productive openness to cultural exchange and, by approaching Germany through a female lens, imported an alternative, 'other' Germany into English letters.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Preface/Vorwort
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Entrée to the 'Other' Germany: Anna Jameson, Ottilie von Goethe, and Their Women's Network
• Chapter 2 Germany through a Female Lens: Anna Jameson's Writings, 1834-1860
• Chapter 3 Networked Families in Germany: Mary Howitt, Anna Mary Howitt, and Elizabeth Gaskell
• Chapter 4 An Unbeliever in Germany: Marian Evans (George Eliot), 1854-1855
• Chapter 5 The Anglo-German Fiction of George Eliot and Jessie Fothergill: Daniel Deronda (1876) and The First Violin (1878)
• Chapter 6 New Woman Travellers and Translators: Michael Field and Amy Levy
• Chapter 7 An Anglo-German Expatriate-Citizen: Elizabeth von Arnim
• Chapter 8 Queer Borders: Vernon Lee's Haunted Expatriate Writings
• Nachwort/Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index