The main concerns in Therese Huber's (1764-1829) letters from this period are her situation as a writer of increasing renown and her problems in finding a publisher and a post as governess. The letters also give us Therese Huber's views on education methods (e.g. Pestalozzi), Catholicism (her daughter Luise converted to Catholicism in this period), politics (Napoleon, the Munich academic dispute, German nationals movement), and economic issues. She further reports on her travels to Munich, Stuttgart, and Switzerland. Her correspondence with Emil von Herder on books they had read was designed to give the unemployed and suicidally inclined young man support and encouragement.

In the years 1804 to late 1807, the concerns expressed in the letters of Therese Huber centre around incisive changes in her private life. The most notable of these are the death of Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, the move to rural surroundings, the arrival of Emil von Herder in her immediate family circle and the departure of Victor Aime Huber for the Fellenberg Educational Institute in Hofwil (Switzerland). In addition, the letters provide insights into Huber's engagement with a variety of issues: anonymous authorship, the collection of letters written by Huber and Georg Forster for use in their biographies, new professional and private contacts, and, on a broader plane, the major political restructurings in Europe as a result of the Napoleonic wars."

In the planned nine-volume edition of the letters of Therese Huber (1764-1829), Volume 1 contains those penned by her up to her 40th year, thus documenting the development from late adolescence, through her two marriages (first to Georg Forster, then to Ludwig Ferdinand Huber) and the beginnings of her activity as writer and translator, up to the imminent move of the Huber family to Ulm. The letters are testimonies both of Huber's personal biography and of the times she lived in, and reflect the career of a successful and famous woman in the period around 1800, combining the duties of housewife, wife, and mother with professional activity as a writer and later as an editor. Alongside the development of an individual code of morality, the letters document the progress in Therese Huber's reading behaviour and critical judgment as well as the interests and motivation behind her own literary output. They also provide insights into the social life of the age, notably in GAttingen and Vilnius, but also in Mainz at the time of the French Revolution and the foundation of the first German Republic.

The interaction between the theory and practice of gender systems around 1800 is studied here with reference to the correspondence between the author Therese Huber (1764-1829) and Emil von Herder (1783-1855). How powerful were the contemporary images of men and women? Did Huber respond to them with submission or emancipation? How did she define herself within the existing order of things? To answer these questions, topics addressed in these letters (e.g. education for girls) are analyzed against the background of texts like Rousseau's AEmileA. The ambivalence of the positions represented by Huber and Herder thus becomes discernible.