In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Lexikon deutschsprachiger Epik und Dramatik von Autorinnen (1730–1900)
  • Arnd Bohm
Gudrun Loster-Schneider and Gaby Pailer, eds., Lexikon deutschsprachiger Epik und Dramatik von Autorinnen (1730–1900). Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke, 2006. xii + 492 pp., with CD-ROM.

How I would have welcomed a reference work such as this had it been available years ago when I undertook to teach my first seminar on German women writers. Not only was it a challenge to locate texts, it was an even greater challenge to convince senior colleagues that there was material worth studying. "Were there any German women writers?" could still be asked in all seriousness. Since then a range of bibliographies and histories by Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Elisabeth Friedrichs, Elke P. Frederiksen, Gisela Brinker-Gabler, and Susanne Kord, to cite only a few, have opened up vistas on an entire continent of women writers who were active in German in all genres since the medieval period. There are certainly enough authors and texts. [End Page 236]

But the bibliographical recovery of names and titles is only a first necessary step in recovering any legacy of literary production by women. At some point, someone actually has to read the texts in order to disclose the contents and enable analysis and classification to proceed. That is where this Lexikon comes in. Members of an international team of over one hundred scholars have written concise reviews of several hundred works produced in a variety of genres including plays, novels, tales, memoirs, travelogues, verse epics, autobiographies, and didactic works. Only lyric poetry is absent.

Each entry of about two pages is divided into halves, consisting first of a synopsis of the contents and then observations about structure, authorial intentions, and reception. The style is clear and readable, so that even libraries serving primarily undergraduates will want to add this volume to their reference collections.

The entries are organized alphabetically by the author's last name and then by title within the entry. One might quibble about the decision to use the name under which the work first appeared where that was a pseudonym (e.g. Anselm Heine for Anselma Heine or Ernst Rosmer for Elga Bernstein), but an index of the authors cross-refers the pseudonyms and the actual names. The criterion for inclusion within the arbitrary dates of 1730 and 1900 was the date of the works, whereby the date of origin rather than of first publication decides, admitting Charlotte Schiller's Die heimliche Heirat even though it was only published in 1954 as part of Friedrich Schiller's collected works.

Although a majority of the entries fall outside the time of primary interest to the readers of the Goethe Yearbook, there is much to be gleaned for the period between 1750 and 1830. Some figures are immediately familiar even if their respective works are not: Bettina von Arnim, Marianne Ehrmann, Karoline von Günderrode, Therese Huber, Meta Klopstock, Sophie Mereau, Charlotte Schiller, Dorothea Schlegel, Johanna Schopenhauer, Amalie Schoppe, and Charlotte von Stein. Others will be new even to specialists, for example Julie Berger, Catharina Helena Doerrien, Elisabeth Hollman, and Auguste von Wallenheim.

Although naturally concerned to attract new readers for their respective texts, the contributors are judicious in their evaluations. Their aim is not to trumpet the discovery of long-lost masterpieces but rather to give substance to what is still a sketchy view of things. The most frequent evaluative remark points to the lack of critical reception so far and the need or potential for more research. Not least among the virtues of this project is that it will suggest so many topics for investigation. It will be an especially invaluable guide for graduate students casting about for figures and texts to examine.

Unfortunately, when one assesses its contribution as an impetus for research the accompanying CD proves rather disappointing. Basically it is nothing more than a straightforward electronic version of the printed text, a smart index. Granted, considerations of space and cost limit the amount of biographical and bibliographical information that can be in the print version. Such limiting factors are negligible, however, for a CD or a DVD. Ideally, the project would have reproduced at...

pdf

Share