The Goethe era of German literature was dominated by men. Women were discouraged from reading and scorned as writers; Schiller saw female writers as typical 'dilettantes'. But the attempt to exclude did not always succeed, and the growing literary market rewarded some women's determination. This study combines archival research, literary analysis, and statistical evidence to give a sociological-historical overview of the conditions of women's literary production. Highlighting many authors who have fallen into obscurity, this study tells the story of women who managed to write and publish at a time when their efforts were not welcomed. Although eighteenth-century gender ideology is an important pre-condition for women's literary production, it does not necessarily determine the praxis of their actual experiences, as this study makes clear. Using a range of examples from a variety of sources, the real story of women who read, wrote, and published in the shadow of Goethe emerges.

German women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries have been the subject of feminist, literary, critical and historical studies for around 30 years. This volume takes stock of what feminist literary criticism has achieved in that time and reflects on future trends in the field.

Identifies and analyzes thematizations of women and death from the past five centuries, illuminating the present and recent past. The theme of women and death is pervasive in the German culture of the past five centuries. With the conviction that only an interdisciplinary approach can explore a typology as far-reaching and significant as this, and in accordance with the feminist tenet that images are accountable for norms, this volume investigates how iconic representations of women and death came about and why they endure. Traditionally, representations of women as agents of death -- when they have been considered at all -- have been considered separately from women as victims, as though there was no shared thematic ground. Here, familiar depictions of female victims are examined alongside the more unsettling spectacle of women as killers, exposing cultural assumptions. Essays explore, among others, the themes of virgin sacrifice and female infanticides, "Death and the Maiden" in art, female vampires in literature, and women killersin the media. Others compare cultural practices such as female mourning across historical contexts, examining change and the reasons for it. The authors' judgments eschew the simplistic and programmatic, contributing not just to current research in German literature, but also to understanding of cultural history in general. Contributors: Stephanie Knoell, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Anna Linton, Bettina Bildhauer, Mary Lindemann, Helen Fronius, Anna Richards, Jurgen Barkhoff, Lawrence Kramer, Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius, Clare Bielby, Gisela Ecker. Anna Linton is Lecturer in German at Kings College London, and Helen Fronius is an AHRC Research Fellow and College Lecturer at Exeter College Oxford.