Katherine R. Goodman is Associate Professor of German at Brown University.
Edith Waldstein is Associate Professor of Humanities at Wartburg College.
“This is a detailed and competent account of German women writers around 1800, the first of this kind in English; it offers a wealth of information about the cultural background and conditions and good analyses of selected literary works. It is written in a clear style and is often vivid and interesting; it discusses in a sober, critical form a good number of issues of feminist scholarship.
“The classical period of German literature has been considered the ‘period of Goethe,’ and the enormous diversity and richness of the period has been suppressed. One of the significant aspects is the emergence of a somewhat educated female readership and of the first professional women: educators, writers, actresses, theatre directors, journal editors. The book contains a good deal of information about this previously mostly forgotten or neglected group.” ― Wulf Koepke, Texas A & M University
“There is a good balance here between established scholars and quite new scholars. This group represents an emerging trend in ‘German-American Germanist Feminism’―a growing group who often publish in German. It is essential that colleagues in other disciplines have feminist scholarship available to them in a language they can read.” ― Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres, university of Minnesota, Twin Cities