Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany

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.

• Provides a truly interdisciplinary account of ten Victorian women writers and their sustained cultural exchanges with a surprisingly progressive nineteenth-century Germany, incorporating literature, culture (including art and music), travel, and sexualities
• Introduces readers to major and lesser-known writers who illuminate Germany and German culture, crossing the genres of fiction, poetry, art criticism, travel writing, translation, letters, and diaries to paint a full and colourful picture
• Enhances knowledge of social and publishing history and demonstrates the importance of direct contact with other cultures and languages
• Revises the dominant association of George Eliot with Germany by offering a fuller, more complicated history in which she stands as a successor more than a pioneer on her first contact with Germany