Bluestocking Feminism and British-German Cultural Transfer, 1750-1837
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Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2017 2016 2015 2014 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Johns, Alessa. Bluestocking feminism and British- German cultural transfer, 1750–1837 / Alessa Johns. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 472- 11938- 7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 03594- 6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12047- 5 (e- book) 1. Feminism— Europe— History— 18th century. 2. Social change— Europe— History— 18th century. 3. Culture diffusion— Europe— History— 18th century. 4. European literature— 18th century. 5. Great Britain— Civilization— 18th century. 6. Germany— Civilization— 18th century. 7. Great Britain— Relations— Germany. 8. Germany— Relations— Great Britain. I. Title. HQ1587.J64 2014 305.4094090'33— dc23 2014004812 For my parents Jorun and Donald Johns Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professors Barbara Schaff and Frank Kelleter for sponsoring my fellowship at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Göttingen, which provided the ideal environment for completing this book. I am grateful to Director Dagmar Coester- Waltjen, Deputy Directors Doris Lemmermöhle and Gerhard Lauer, Coordinators Dominik Hünniger, Johanna Schott, and Turan Lackschewitz, as well as the many lively staff members who saw to every convenience from handling computer glitches, library access, and visa acquisition, to housing, bicycles, meals, and attendance at local cultural events. I thank my fellow Fellows and Associates for intellectual stimula- tion, engaging conversations, and friendship: in particular Shaheen Ali, Regina Bendix, Elke Brendel, Don Brenneis, Ingrid Hehmeyer, Christine Langenfeld, Joep Leerssen, Jason Mittell, Dorry Noyes, Per Øhrgaard, Roland Pfau, Ann Rigney, Heinrich Schäfer, Norbert Schappacher, Lalit Vachani, and Christiane von Stutterheim. My work was also generously supported by a fellowship from the Herzog-August Bibliothek, Wolfen- büttel; a University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities; and ongoing assistance from the Committee on Research of the University of California, Davis. I gratefully acknowledge advice on individual chapters from John Brewer, George Starr, Chris Reynolds, Jennie Batchelor, Cora Kaplan, Gerhard Lauer, and Thorsten Unger. And I thank the anonymous review- ers of my complete manuscript; their judicious comments and criticisms were very helpful to me as I revised. It has been a pleasure to work with the University of Michigan Press, and particularly Tom Dwyer. For colle- gial advice and support I thank Paula Backscheider, Sean Burgess, Adri- viii • acknowledgments ana Craciun, Gesa Dane, Fran Dolan, Margaret France, April London, Colin Milburn, Liz Miller, Ruth Perry, Nicole Pohl, Betty Schellenberg, Julia Simon, and Birgit Tautz. I could not have completed my study without the copious resources of the State and University Library at the University of Göttingen; I am especially grateful to former director Elmar Mittler and librarian Reimer Eck. I benefited also from conducting research at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel; the Goethe and Schiller Archive and Anna Amalia Library, Weimar; the publishing firm Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen; the British Library, London; the Bancroft and Doe Librar- ies, UC Berkeley; and the Shields Library, UC Davis. I thank publish- ers for permission to reprint earlier work in revised form: a prior ver- sion of chapter 1 appeared in Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan, eds., Women and Material Culture (2007), published by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. The full published version of this publication is available from: http://us.macmillan.com/ QuickSearchResultsV3.aspx?search=women+and+material+culture&ctl 00%24ctl00%24cphContent%24ucAdvSearch%24imgGo.x=0&ctl00%2 4ctl00%24cphContent%24ucAdvSearch%24imgGo.y=0. Parts of chap- ter 3 were published in Das Erdbeben von Lissabon und der Katastrophendis- kurs im 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Gerhard Lauer and Thorsten Unger, Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert— Supplementa (Hg. von der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts), Bd. 15, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2008, 351– 63. I am indebted to Sabine and Andreas von Tiedemann, Luise, Hans, and Felix, for their generous, kind, and frequent hospitality to me and my family as I researched in Göttingen; to Rima Holland for happy stays in Heidelberg before and after Frankfurt flights; to Elke Schauer for tips about life in Göttingen and Lower Saxony; to Salvatore Ciniglio for delightful meals and conversation; and to Tom and Chris Crozier, Anna Maria and Karol Berger, Ana Peluffo, Pablo Ortiz, Emily Albu, and Alan Taylor for friendship and unstinting moral support. I am grateful for the steadfast and loving encouragement of my fam- ily. My parents, Jorun and Donald Johns, and my brothers Karl and Andreas have consistently cheered on my academic pursuits. I thank my mother for her patience in looking over my many translations from the German and Andreas for checking my French; Karl could be counted on for art- historical information. My husband, Chris Reynolds, and our son Gabriel have daily supplied love, distraction, joy, and companionship; I have appreciated their readiness to travel back and forth between Cali- acknowledgments • ix fornia and Germany, and indeed in the course of this project Göttingen has become a second home. My talented in- laws Joel, Ellen, Anne Marie, Susan, and Martha Reynolds and their far- flung families have been an unfailing source of support and vacation fun. I dedicate this book with admiration and gratitude to my parents, who, by going to the trouble and expense of raising me and my brothers biculturally and bilingually, enabled me to take on this project in the first place. Contents List of Illustrations xiii Introduction— Cultural Transfer and the Terrains Vastes 1 1. The Book as Cosmopolitan Object: Anna Vandenhoeck, Publisher, and Philippine Charlotte of Brunswick- Wolfenbüttel, Collector 17 2. Translation Following Clarissa: Georg Forster and Meta Forkel, Mary Wollstonecraft and Joseph Johnson 39 3. Representing Vesuvius: Northern European Tourists and the Napoleonic Culture of War 88 4. Travel and Transfer: Anna Jameson and Transnational Spurs to European Reform 121 Afterword— Les Terrains Plus Vastes 161 Notes 171 Works Cited 203 Index 221 Illustrations 1. Anna Vandenhoeck 24 2. Genealogical chart of connections between the houses of Hanover, Brunswick, and Prussia 27 3. Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder, Philippine Charlotte and Karl I of Brunswick- Wolfenbüttel and their Family 30 4. Michael Wutky, The Summit of Vesuvius Erupting 114 5. Angelika Kauffmann, Pliny the Younger with His Mother at Misenum 115 6. Pierre- Henri de Valenciennes, Eruption of Vesuvius on the 24th of August 79 116 7. Auguste Desperret, Troisième éruption du volcan de 1789 119 8. Anna Jameson, Wayish,ky’s Lodge 138 9. Reconstruction of Vesuvius in the English garden of Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz at Wörlitz 164 Introduction Cultural Transfer and the Terrains Vastes This book elucidates processes of cultural transfer between Britain and Germany during the period of the Personal Union— the time from 1714 to 1837 when the kings of England were simultaneously Electors of Hanover— by focusing on how certain exchanges, especially those undertaken by bluestocking feminists, furthered social reform. Britain and Germany, by contrast with America and France, sidestepped revo- lution but nonetheless generated discourses of individual and social liberty. Often in reaction to French continental cultural hegemony and imperial designs, some English and German actors undertook programs of social change inspired from beyond their own borders. They engaged in a process of cultural transfer, which involved the reciprocal movement of knowledge, methods, people, and goods between regions that were not impenetrably bounded but dynamically interrelated, regions better viewed as porous and internally differentiated cultural zones. Cultural transfer, drawing on notions from postcolonial theory, emphasizes complex processes and hybridity and modifies the idea of simple influence or reception: that is, the pat, unidirectional impact of one nation, perceived as impermeably bounded and inhabited by a monolithic population imbued with a homogeneous national identity, on another entity