Invisible Bibliographies: Three Seventeenth-Century German Women Writers

In: Women in German yearbook: feminist studies in German literature & culture, Volume 14, Issue 1, p. 41-69

Abstract

Many seventeenth-century German women writers have yet to be reclaimed by literary scholarship. Some women published anonymously, and some have not been recognized as the author of a given work. In many cases, texts are often unattributed, or even misattributed, often to a man. This unfortunate situation demonstrates that primary bibliographic research is an essential component of feminist scholarship of the Early Modern Period. Three Saxon sisters, Sophie Eleonore Landgravine of Hessen, Marie Elisabeth Duchess of Schleswig Holstein, and Magdalena Sibylle of Saxony, provide the focus of this micro-history, which both uncovers and recovers their published works. (MRW)