Women, the novel, and the German nation

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Todd Kontje offers the first survey in English of novels by German women from 1771 to 1871. He introduces readers to the lives and works of fourteen women writers of the period--including Sophie von LaRoche, Sophie Mereau, Fanny Lewald, and Eugenie Marlitt--and argues that their novels played an important role in shaping attitudes toward class, gender, and the nation in the century preceding Germany's first unification. Women, the Novel, and the German Nation explores ways in which novels about traditionally feminine domestic concerns also comment on patriarchal politics in the German fatherland.