Men, Women and Progress. Literary Translation

Abstract

This chapter analyses translations as cultural objects that circulate between languages and movement cultures. It takes the case of an English novel of the 1880s and its (partial) translation into German as a starting point to explore the milieus, dynamics, and practices of transcultural mediation between European women’s movements of the late nineteenth century. Tying in with the concept of ‘activist translation’, it compares translation as a form of political intervention with translating as a professional practice. It submits that to analyse the political and social contexts in which a text is translated as well as its relation to other, accompanying forms of transfer is a prerequisite to understanding the character and the rationale of a specific translation.

In discussing the literary translations that Käthe Schirmacher produced between 1888 and 1904, this chapter asks how texts are changed in the course of their translation. Although the focus is on textual analysis rather than biography, contexts and constellations are considered an important perspective for understanding this process. Tying in with the ‘trust-based’ approach to translation history, I am interested in the broader field of cultural mediation and the role of translation in this field.¹ In line with Pym, Rizzi, and Lang’s suggestion of addressing ‘issues of complex social causation that enable or hinder intercultural communication’,² I follow the translation process downstream and examine the conditions in which the source text was conceived, the milieus in which it was selected for translation, and the relationships and practices that enabled its transmission into another language and culture.

The chapter starts by examining Schirmacher’s first published translation of a literary text, Men, Women and Progress by Emma Hosken Woodward (1845–1884). It outlines the structure and narrative of Woodward’s novel and describes the milieu in which a young female German teacher came across the book.³ I argue that the temporary migration of young middle-class women between European countries in search of education and/or occupation contributed to the formation of an informal, transnational space. In this space, personal relationships between women from different countries and backgrounds could develop and political ideas as well as new practices could circulate. I argue that since women were excluded from the more prestigious institutions of knowledge production, they could not draw on the trust created by these institutions and their norms. They often had their first translating experiences in the more informal milieu of transnational female networks; here, they could build personal relationships based on trust and gain confidence in their own abilities.

By looking at other literary translations by Schirmacher, I show the difference between a translation that is produced in the context of a political movement for an activist audience on the one hand and commercial translation on the other, focusing on the practice of translation and the different ways in which trust is generated. Finally, I explore the extent to which Schirmacher’s novella Die Libertad (1891), her first literary publication, might have taken Emma Hosken Woodward’s book as a model and how it can be interpreted as a statement in a transnational dialogue.⁴

A Romantic Novel on the ‘Dreadful Woman Question’ and Its Author

Despite its title, Men, Women and Progress, published in London in 1885, is a romantic novel. After some trials and tribulations, Madeline, a well-to-do young lady and committed activist for the women’s cause, and Henry, a promising young man and future peer, are happily engaged. Step by step, Henry, hitherto unconcerned, becomes convinced of the significance of women’s rights, while Madeline must acknowledge that against her will, she has fallen in love with the handsome brother of her friend Nellie. After a struggle, she accepts that the fight for a more equitable society can also be fought together with a loving male partner. However, the way the author unfolded the conventional, heterosexual story was unusual for a Victorian novel.⁵ Since the ‘woman question’ is the main cause of misunderstanding between the lovers, debates on social and political issues form an important part of the narrative.

Taking this somewhat contradictory mixture of love story, political treatise, and symposium into account, we can both characterise it as feminist theory avant la lettre and as domestic fiction reflecting the ongoing debate on the women’s cause.⁶ Both features made it highly interesting for the growing number of young women fending for themselves as teachers and governesses, who often worked abroad, like Schirmacher after her 1887 agrégation in Paris.

About Emma Hosken Woodward we know little; the information we do possess is mostly based on the circumstances and contents of her work. The way her literary style and the plot lines of her novels develop, as well as the publication contexts of her writings, supports certain conclusions about her life. Her novels Married for Money (1875) and Bitter to Sweet End (1877) portray the troubles of young middle-class women and their struggle to find fulfilment, livelihood, and a place in society.⁷ These first two narratives only implicitly reveal the injustices of a patriarchal society through the fates of the female protagonists. The last book, Men, Women and Progress, tackles the matter more directly. Set in Crag’s Nest, the country home of newlywed Nellie Silverton and her husband Fred, it features a series of talks between a group of friends enjoying a leisurely summer stay at the house. Representing typical positions, the participants express strong opinions on issues such as women’s education, a girl’s proper place, women’s welfare activism, and demands for political rights for women. While Madeline Acton, Nellie Silverton, and Professor Wray hold the most progressive views, retired Major Knagge and his manipulative wife stand for conservative beliefs.⁸ The host’s husband Fred, her brother Henry, and their aunt Miss Wynter take varying and changing positions, thus spurring on the debate.

Emma Hosken Woodward (1845–1884), who married twice, was widowed in 1870 at the age of only 25, shortly after the death of her infant son from diphtheria. She published her first two novels anonymously. Records show that she was registered as a boarder at the Sisters of St Margaret in Bloomsbury, London, in 1881, after living together with her mother and her two young daughters for several years in her native Penryn (Cornwall) after the death of her first husband.⁹ We know nothing about the family's financial circumstances, but the means of the young widow of a pastor of a small Welsh parish were probably very limited. Both the fact that she remained anonymous and the kind of publisher she chose suggest that Emma Hosken Woodward (then Emma Hosken) wrote her first two novels mainly for money.¹⁰ Samuel Tinsley (1846–1903), the younger brother of publishers William and Edward Tinsley, founded his company in 1872 at the age of 26, specialising in low-quality fiction and publishing several dozen books each year.¹¹ Published anonymously, young Emma Hosken’s first book was among Samuel Tinsley’s early productions. The fact that he soon published a three-volume novel by the anonymous author suggests some success of her debut novel.

The ‘three-volume’ was a major publishing format for new novels in Victorian Britain. With their standardised format and relatively high price, these books did not primarily address private buyers. They were often marketed via subscription and mainly produced for circulating libraries that lent reading matter to middle-class readers for an annual fee. The division into three parts helped create the demand for the next volume and pay the printing cost of the later volumes from the income by the first. The system promised a stable profit to the author, publisher, and librarian, with limited editions. But the way they were marketed also strongly influenced the style and composition of Victorian novels over several decades.¹² Featuring complicated and adventurous stories of impossible love, orphans of mysterious background, and momentous misunderstandings between protagonists, Emma Hosken’s first two books were a good fit for the concept. Probably because they were part of a mass production, no reviews of them can be found.

Soon after her move to London, Emma Hosken married Bernard Barham Woodward (1853–1930), a natural scientist and librarian at the Natural History Museum.¹³ He was to edit her one-volume third novel Men, Women and Progress in her name in 1885, a couple of months after her unexpected death at the age of only thirty-nine. In his foreword, he declared he had changed nothing apart from correcting minor errors.¹⁴ He thus claimed to pass on his late wife’s unmitigated positions on controversial issues while he protected her memory by pointing to the fictional character of the book where ‘the personal views of the author will not be found in any isolated member of the group’.¹⁵ It is only thanks to him that we can attribute authorship of Emma Hosken Woodward’s first two books to her and know the names of her daughters, Agnes Emily and Gwendoline Mary, to whom he dedicated the book.¹⁶

In his dedication, Bernard Barham Woodward mentioned the beneficial work his late wife had done for ‘the weak and helpless’. We should bear in mind, however, that unlike writing popular fiction for money, working for the welfare of others was among the few socially accepted employments for a middle-class woman at the time. But certainly the author shared the experience of being a working woman with her novel’s main character, Madeline. In this respect, it is also noticeable that the author’s depiction of marriage changed. While in her earlier novels, marriage was an onerous burden for a young woman (marrying for money to support a poor family) or an unattainable romantic goal (hoping for a sweet end to a bitter story), Emma Hosken Woodward expressed optimistic expectations of conjugal partnership in her third novel. Presumably, like Madeline, she also hoped to find support from her husband for her plan to write a serious book. By publishing her last work, her husband showed his willingness to fulfil his late wife’s hopes.

Unlike Emma Hosken Woodward’s earlier novels, Men, Women and Progress was published with Dulau & Co, a publisher focusing on scientific books and catalogues for the British Museum as well as on cooperations with foreign booksellers such as Hachette in Paris or Baedeker in Germany.¹⁷ Bernard Barham Woodward had clearly chosen a publisher from the context of his profession as a librarian.¹⁸ We have no record of how the publication was financed. However, the fact that Dulau produced books that must have either been commissioned by an institution (such as catalogues) or that promised considerable profit (such as travel guides) suggests that the editor (or somebody else) had sponsored the enterprise.¹⁹

After its publication, the book was announced several times in the press as a reference book on the woman question, while the fact it was a novel only figured as a secondary feature. An elaborate review lauded the book for its lively narrative as well as for its accurate description of the woman question:

The volume bristles with stories, and illustrations. And repartees, so that nobody could find it dull; while the whole subject is set out fully and logically. Thus anybody who wants to read up this topic could not do better than see ‘Men, Women, and Progress’.²⁰

The reviewer, writing under the name Filomena, also mentioned that she had met ‘the authoress’, a ‘gracious young woman’, some weeks before her untimely death when she was ‘full of eager interest’ about her forthcoming book.²¹ While ‘Filomena’ underlined the memorial character of the posthumous publication, a short critique in The Saturday Review incited interest in the novel by characterising it as ‘a stoutish book […] full of the dreadful woman question, debated […] by people who sit down and spout at one another in cold blood’.²² The ‘dreadful woman question’ was, indeed, a much-discussed topic in the UK in the early 1880s—certainly more so than in any other European country at that time.²³ Periodicals like the Women’s Suffrage Journal regularly informed about women’s demands and achievements. The transnational character of the movement and the importance of its British strand are exemplified in an anthology published by the American journalist Theodore Stanton (1851–1925) in 1884. The son of feminist activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) collected reports on the ‘woman question in Europe’ from local activists and translated them into English where necessary.²⁴

Published just when Emma Hosken Woodward was writing her book, this anthology (and the many references it gave for further reading) may well have been one of the sources of information for her. She depicts the feminist protagonists of her novel, Nellie Silverton and Madeline Acton, as graduates of Girton, the first women’s college, founded near Cambridge in 1869, which is prominently portrayed in Stanton’s book.²⁵ The figure of Professor Wray, an articulate supporter of the women’s cause, may well have been modelled on liberal academics like Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) who together with his wife Eleanor Sidgwick, née Balfour (1845–1936) had helped open British universities to female students in the 1870s.²⁶

A volume by an unknown author who had already died at the date of publication had a difficult position on the book market. There certainly was an interest in novels on the woman question in the UK, where women’s rights issues were already discussed in the general public in the 1880s, but the book’s timeliness probably also limited its reception.

In a Transnational Community of Woman Teachers

Men, Women and Progress must still have been in circulation three years after its publication, when twenty-four-year-old Käthe Schirmacher moved to the UK to work as a language teacher in Liverpool during the school year 1888/89.²⁷ Her correspondence with her family and friends during that year gives a good impression of the milieu of educated middle-class women the novel addressed. On her arrival, the aspiring young Schirmacher, who had obtained the title of agrégée d’ université in Paris the year before, envisaged teaching at an English high school only as a transitional occupation. Lacking professional opportunities in her own country, she strived for a university career in the USA.²⁸ For this personal goal, she had sought prominent backing on her way to London. Through the help of a friend she had met former US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (1829–1906), a one-time German revolutionary, during his family visit to Kiel. As Schirmacher wrote to her parents after the encounter, the renowned politician had encouraged her to apply for a professorship in his country and promised his support. However, he had also termed the perfect command of English, French, and German as well as the knowledge of the literatures of these languages as indispensable prerequisites for her plans.²⁹

Schirmacher claimed to speak French like a native but she knew that her English had weaknesses.³⁰ In June 1888, she travelled to the UK with a stipend from a German women’s organisation which she had promised a report on the English women’s education system.³¹ But within three weeks of her arrival in London, she had secured herself a position as a teacher of German and French at the Blackburne House High School for Girls in Liverpool.³² To perfect her command of the English language now became her most important task: ‘I’ll try to write in English, for I have not a moment to loose [sic]’, she told her mother and father, in English.³³ For this purpose, she actively sought the friendship and help of other young women. Her dearest friend in England became Amelia Hartley (life dates unknown). She had become acquainted with her during her stay at Amelia’s family’s boarding house in Kew where young middle-class women lodged while visiting London on their way to a new employment as a governess or teacher.³⁴

The friendship between them was filled with excitement about architecture (Amelia’s special passion) and literature and political thought (Schirmacher’s area of interest).³⁵ They remained close even after Schirmacher’s departure, which they both regretted bitterly.³⁶ During the winter of 1888/89, three young women, Rheims-based French teacher Julie Barbezat (life dates unknown), with whom Schirmacher had shared an apartment and exchanged language lessons during their studies in Paris, Amelia Hartley in Kew, and Schirmacher in Liverpool established a vibrant transnational learning group in which translating as a daily practice figured prominently. They exchanged letters in French, German, and English about literature and the arts. They circulated excerpts of books they had read and essays in the three languages and corrected them for each other.³⁷ They reported on the lectures they had heard, the theatre plays they had seen, and the topics they had studied at the library. Hartley not only wrote about her visits to the British Museum but also about the books suggested by the educated boarders at her mother’s house.³⁸

Emma Hosken Woodward’s book may well have come up in these young women’s correspondence on authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare, or John Stuart Mill.³⁹ It could, however, as well have been talked about at Blackburne House, where Schirmacher had established a special friendship with the school’s headmistress Kate Vokins (life dates unknown) who had been one of the first students at Newnham College and was one of the first women to hold a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University.⁴⁰ Vokins, who had become headmistress not long before, sought to bring an atmosphere of serious learning into the institute and encouraged the teachers to continue their education.⁴¹ Schirmacher soon began to study at the University of Liverpool with tremendous zeal and more and more saw teaching as only her secondary task. Winning a prize for the best essay on English literature, she excelled even among her English native fellow students.⁴²

However, in the spring of 1889, Schirmacher became seriously ill, and this time her already chronic sore throat did not immediately improve. It is not known whether this was due to overworking (as her family suspected) or if a chronic lung disease had broken out.In any case, her doctors advised her to speak as little as possible and teaching was out of the question after the end of the school year 1888/89.⁴³ After this bitter setback, she stayed at home with her family in Danzig for the following years. But she made the most of her time by continuing her Romance studies, writing literary texts and journalistic articles (on topics including British schools and colleges for girls and women⁴⁴), and teaching French to young women in Germany using the method she had developed with Amelia Hartley and Julie Barbezat in 1888: correspondence.⁴⁵ In this critical phase of her life, Schirmacher took up translating—not only as a language exercise but as a political initiative. Her first translation was of Men, Women and Progress, which she started translating in September 1889 during an extended stay at her aunt’s house in Graudenz (now Grudziądz). Enthusiastically, she wrote to her mother that she enjoyed the book’s ‘simple truth’ (einfache Wahrheit) and hoped it would ‘do good’ (es wird gut tun) in her country.⁴⁶

Adapting Men, Women and Progress for a German Audience

The ‘simple truth’ in Emma Hosken Woodward’s novel was, for a considerable part, rather dry material on history and society. In their conversations, the protagonists quote from scientific papers and journals and exchange sophisticated reasoning on social problems and scientific arguments. To detail the information, the author did not shirk from including scholarly material such as statistics, legislation, and recent political debate.⁴⁷ By including footnotes and references, Woodward transcended the fictional character of her text.⁴⁸ Under the guise of a romantic novel, she provided her readers with information on political questions, pragmatic arguments for women’s equality, and indications for further reading.

Supported by Professor Wray, the characters Madeline Acton and Nellie Silverton demand equal chances for women to educate themselves, find employment, and develop an individual character instead of complying with men’s wishes. Women should have the opportunity to contribute to the general welfare in individual ways, they argue, not just as the ‘mother[s] of heroes’.⁴⁹ The statements of their opponents about motherhood, domestic virtues, the supposed weakness of women, and female honour (especially on the part of Major Knagge and his domineering wife) motivate them to defend the struggle for women’s equality against the claim that female nature or religious belief opposes it.⁵⁰ Conceivably, this was a welcome storyline for ambitious women like the Liverpool headmistress Kate Vokins or the young correspondents Hartley, Schirmacher, and Barbezat who were struggling with the bars to their high aspirations. Very likely, they enjoyed reading about cultured conversations among educated women in which female ambitions were not deprecated or belittled.

The German translation appeared as Männer, Frauen und Fortschritt eight years after the publication of the start text.⁵¹ Although it covered only a small part of the English book, the considerable abridgement was not mentioned on the title page, which rendered the English original title literally and named Emma Hosken Woodward as the author and Käthe Schirmacher as the translator. In her foreword, which supplanted B. B. Woodward’s editorial remarks, Schirmacher presented the author as a recently deceased Englishwoman and hinted in a veiled way at the abridgement of the text.⁵² She briefly sketched the plot of the book, but did not make it clear that she had left out about two-thirds of the English text. Consisting of only four chapters, Schirmacher’s translation focused on four themes: women’s domestic and their professional work, prostitution, and the concept of progress. She cut all chapters on the romantic relationship and did not even mention it in her introductory description of the characters. Whereas the narrative of the English text ends with an emotional engagement scene, the translation concludes with a speech by Professor Wray. In a way, Schirmacher continued the change of perspective that Woodward had started herself: to turn a novel into non-fiction. However, in her translation, the charming ambiguity of romantic novel and non-fiction book on the situation of women in society is lost and what remains is a political treatise presented in the pleasant form of a fictional symposium.

That said, what were the political topics presented and what was left out? To cut two chapters on education was probably the most reasonable abridgment, since the issue ran through the book and the argument for equal education rather prominently returned in the chapter on women’s employment, which Schirmacher did translate.⁵³ Also, the section on education in the source text focused on the demands of women from the educated classes, whereas in the chapter on employment the request for women’s equal opportunities was firmly linked to poverty and the fact that the vast majority of working-class women had to earn their and their children’s living.⁵⁴ We can infer, therefore, that Schirmacher chose to translate the more socially inclusive part of the book. The shortening of the chapter on British marriage property laws reflects the national specificity of the legal matter: German and Austrian women faced somewhat different legal problems in their marriages. It was, however, a significant political decision to omit two chapters on women’s suffrage, a disputed topic in the German-speaking women’s movement.⁵⁵

Given the controversial nature of the debate on suffrage, its omission could be interpreted as a de-radicalisation of the start text. But Schirmacher might also have considered it a distraction from another contentious issue she wanted to highlight, the question of prostitution, which turns up rather late in the start text. Schirmacher overturned the chapter order and made this the second chapter of her translation. She rephrased the title ‘Some Social Problems’ to ‘Einige soziale Fragen’ (some social questions) thus more closely linking the chapter’s topic with the most burning social and cultural ‘questions’. The issue is introduced by a private conversation between Professor Wray and Henry Tregarthen, who reflect on whether it is appropriate for Madeline to visit a woman who had made herself ‘notorious’.⁵⁶ Through Wray, who allays Henry’s concerns, the novel unfolds key arguments of the abolitionist movement against the double standard that allowed young men extramarital sexual experiences but ruined a woman as soon as her virtue was doubted. Wray also argues that very often, only poverty forces women to seek refuge in prostitution.⁵⁷ Referring to a conference report on the subject, the professor openly criticises the state regulation of prostitution, a position most certainly too radical to be expressed in a German romantic novel at the time.⁵⁸

In addition to the cuts and the reordering of the chapters, some other details in the translation significantly changed the text. Woodward had opened each chapter with several mottos, quotes from famous writers, scholars, and politicians who supported the women’s cause, thus bolstering her arguments by linking them to acclaimed living and dead figures. Obliterating this element completely, Schirmacher waived this potential opportunity to back up her arguments and thus changed the book’s character. With the substantial shortening of the contextual information and the omission of many references to public figures, the text became a sequence of views and beliefs; the arguments could now be used everywhere but had lost their link to a specific society.

The effort to make the text acceptable in different cultural contexts is even more evident in the last translated chapter, which deals with the concept of progress. In a public speech by Professor Wray, all arguments for the emancipation of women are placed within the framework of evolution. Outlining various stages of societies across time and space, the professor asserts that progress must eventually occur, thus dismissing all counter-arguments as useless defences against a necessary development. Using various natural metaphors, he concludes that resistance against the equality of women would, to the detriment of all, only postpone the advancement of society. In the start text, among other things, he declares:

The great tree of progress, too, […] goes on growing year after year, blossoming and bearing fruit, and close observation of its development only makes more and more apparent the fact that all social advancement has been, and ever will be, in the direct ratio of the extension of equal freedom to the two halves of the human family.⁵⁹

Leaving out references to ambience and audience and deleting the redundancies that often characterise the spoken word in Woodward’s text, Schirmacher in her translation turned the vivid description of a public event at a London learned society into a sequence of doctrines.⁶⁰ The prominent position given to this speech at the very end of her translation intensifies this effect. The decision to translate both ‘evolution’ and ‘progress’, used mostly as synonyms and by turns in Wray’s original speech, with the German term ‘Fortschritt’ (literally: step forward but generally used to mean ‘progress’, never ‘evolution’) led to a momentous change to the chapter title: ‘Women and Evolution’ became ‘Frauen und Fortschritt’.⁶¹ This underlined the call for political agency and attenuated the idea of a natural process. Certainly, the English word ‘evolution’ would have called for a definition in any case, as both the rather unspecific German term ‘Entwicklung’ (meaning development, but literally: unfurling) and the Latin loan word ‘Evolution’ could have been used. The latter, pointing to natural science generally and to Darwinism more specifically, would have done justice to the many social Darwinist references to natural evolution⁶² and even to the ‘survival of the fittest’⁶³ in the English text. But it would have struck another, rather contested ideological tone in Germany where the popularisation of Darwin’s theory was closely linked with atheistic and free religious groups.⁶⁴ Thus, Schirmacher’s choice of ‘Fortschritt’ over ‘Evolution’ was perhaps not so much a politicisation but most likely aimed at a wider acceptance of the translated text.

This may also have been the reason for some mitigations of pejorative cross-cultural comparisons. For instance, Schirmacher omitted the comparison between ‘Turkish women held like slaves in bondage’ and the ‘freedom enjoyed by their sisters in America’ in the source text, translating only Woodward’s more abstract conclusion that the ‘effete condition of the one country’ and the ‘growth, prosperity, and power of the other’ were in the ‘exact ratio with the freedom and advancement of […] women’ in the respective countries.⁶⁵

Another concept used prominently in Men, Women and Progress already had a history of translational consideration: the term ‘strong-minded’, which appears in the English novel as a controversial characterisation of publicly active women. The way the participants in the conversations name female activists and reformers reveals their opinions and, thereby, the lines of conflict. The semantic field stretches from the terms ‘active-minded’ and ‘strong-minded’ (by which label Madeline Acton is introduced)⁶⁶ to the expletive ‘shrieking sisterhood’ as Major Knagge disparagingly describes politically active women.⁶⁷ The term ‘movement’ (without modifier) appears only in affirmative contexts.⁶⁸ ‘[S]hrieking sisterhood’ and ‘movement’ are thus unambiguously negative and positive characterisations respectively of the same activities, whereas the contested term ‘strong-minded’ has more fluid associations.⁶⁹ On the one hand, it is put on a level with ‘shrieking’ as Knagge alternatively speaks about the ‘strong-minded sisterhood’.⁷⁰ On the other, the word’s meaning is negotiated where the reform of women’s rights and opportunities is at stake. Major Knagge’s contention that rallies for woman suffrage are only instigated by ‘ultra strong-minded women who like making a stir’ is met with vehement contradiction: ‘If by “strong-minded”’ said Professor Wray, ‘you mean practical, sensible, self-reliant women, I do not see that these qualities unfit any one for the duties of citizenship, rather the contrary’.⁷¹

Emma Hosken Woodward was obviously striving to redefine the derogatory term and thus create a new female identity. The commitment to a change in the word’s meaning was, however, a recent development. ‘Strong-minded’ had negative connotations even for those who fought for women’s right to study. In her 1876 recollection of her time spent at Girton, US-American citizen Eliza Minturn (life dates unknown) emphasised the good spirit and eagerness that prevailed in the newly founded women’s college but vehemently distinguished the students from ‘the “ strong-minded” type, which has become so justly odious’.⁷² When in 1889 German educational reformer Helene Lange (1848–1930) quoted Minturn in her study on women’s education in England, she left the term ‘strong-minded’ untranslated and explained such women as the ‘emancipated ones’ (die Emanzipierten), a characterisation used ambivalently in German as well.⁷³

It is safe to say that in 1885 the meaning of ‘strong-minded’ was still controversial. Woodward takes full advantage of its ambiguity as a word with which her characters can negotiate arguments about differently valued characteristics in women. This includes a debate whether the same standards should be relevant for men and women.

In a dispute with her brother Henry, who considers himself unfit to face a ‘strong-minded’ woman, Nellie claims that ‘strength of mind’ is a ‘quality very valuable either to man or woman’, which implies ‘a corresponding strength of all the other faculties, good brains, […] and yes, […] warm feelings too’.⁷⁴ Conversely, Major Knagge sees this potential equality of values between the sexes as a hindrance to marital harmony. He wishes for a wife who would ‘refresh the heart of man’ instead of meddling with his affairs: ‘You do not love a woman any the better for being learned or strong-minded’.⁷⁵

That said it is particularly interesting how Schirmacher translated ‘strong-minded’. Usually rendered as ‘willensstark’, the German expression connotes determination, a strong character, sometimes also headstrongness. But she chose instead the rather uncommon term ‘starkgeistig’.⁷⁶ This literal translation focused on the intellectual aspect of the mind, which is qualified as ‘strong’ (stark).⁷⁷ We can assume that this was one of the ‘un-German expressions’ (undeutsche Wendungen) Otto Münsterberg criticised in a letter to Schirmacher when writing about ‘the book translated by you’.⁷⁸ It is, however, interesting that she uses the uncommon German word only when the character Major Knagge speaks deprecatingly about women. Woodward had derided her most negative character by onomatopoetically letting him clear his throat with ‘r-r’-sounds before he spits out a contemptuous remark. Schirmacher leaves this peculiarity untranslated. She might, though, have wanted to compensate by making him use a ridiculous-sounding expression associated with alcohol—the German word ‘Geist’, like the English ‘spirit’, is used to denote ‘ghost’ and ‘mind’ but is also used for distilled liquors such as whiskey or gin. This interpretation is supported by the negative use of ‘starkgeistig’ in the German novel Der grüne Heinrich by Gottfried Keller, which she certainly knew.⁷⁹ For positive descriptions of women, Schirmacher decided on a less ambivalent term. She translated ‘active-minded’ (used synonymously with ‘strong-minded’ by Woodward as a positive attribute in relation to women) with the common German term ‘energisch’ (energetic) thereby stressing vigour but not necessarily dominance.⁸⁰ We can thus safely infer that she strived to communicate the autonomy and strength of the novel’s female characters even if she erased most of the book’s fictional plot.

Publication in an Activist Context

The short text of eighty-two pages that appeared as the German translation of Men, Women and Progress in 1893 had a rather different character to the English novel of nearly four hundred pages from 1885. Stripped of most of its fictionality and of many detailed references to British politics (some of which were also outdated by the time the translation was published), it had become a general argument for women’s emancipation focusing on women’s work, prostitution, and the concept of progress. How is this transformation to be explained?

Probably, the massive shortening of the text was not intended from the onset. When in 1889 the twenty-four-year-old Schirmacher reported to her mother that she was translating an English book, there is no hint that she may only be translating excerpts.⁸¹ Also, she seems to have intended to contact the author’s family as she noted the address of one of Emma Hosken Woodward’s relatives in her diary in 1888.⁸² Three years after her stay in the UK, however, Schirmacher must have decided that only ‘extracts’ could be published in German. In 1891, Amelia Hartley asked Schirmacher about her correspondence with Bernhard Barham Woodward.

Have you published the extracts of Men Women & Prog. You did not tell me if you had made good arrangements with M. Woodward—Did he write nicely to you? I liked the notes he sent me so much. I had a strong desire to become acquainted with him. I shall like to know what you think.⁸³

Since we do not have Bernard Barham Woodward’s letter, we can only speculate about this development. The considerable time-span between the first mention of the translation and its actual publication suggests that it was probably difficult to find funds and a publisher for a substantial novel by a barely-known foreign (female) author. The eventual context of the German publication supports this.

The German excerpts came out as a brochure in the Weimar-based ‘Library of the Women’s Question’ (Bibliothek der Frauenfrage). In this series, Hedwig Johanna Kettler (1851–1937), who was also editor of the radical German journal Frauenberuf (Women’s Profession) republished much-debated journalistic works, talks, and political pamphlets—many of them by herself.⁸⁴ The first issue, consisting of her own text ‘Was wird aus unsern Töchtern?’ (What will become of our daughters?) put forward her central political argument in a sequence of rhetorical questions. Here, she argued that women, who formed the majority of the German population, needed to be educated and allowed to work and in doing so to compete with men.⁸⁵ This pamphlet was republished several times and reviewed even in the British press.⁸⁶ Kettler, one of the first German activists to demand the admission of women to all university studies, was obviously well connected with British radical feminists, as the Women’s Herald introduced her in its series of interviews with famous activists as ‘one of the leaders of the women’s movement in Germany’.⁸⁷ Rather gloomily, Kettler depicts Germany as a country where women were ‘contending with difficulties even now, which are difficulties of the past to the women of most of the veteran cultivated nations’. Still, she defended the German women’s activists’ strategy to keep their distance both from political parties and international organisations, with a hint of German peculiarities that required that German women fought their ‘own fight on their own ground’. She, however, appreciated ‘expressions favourable to the movement of German women in the papers of other countries’ as they influenced the ‘attitude taken by our press’.⁸⁸ She thus hoped for a transnational mediation that would motivate women to fight for more independence in Germany but would not appal the conservative German public.

When Kettler published Schirmacher’s translation of Men, Women and Progress a year later, she may have intended a similar effect. The novel demonstrated how the women’s movement had arrived at the heart of the educated English middle classes. However, by promoting the testimony of an already deceased author, Kettler could steer clear of controversial debates that a living activist could have ignited. As the only translated and the only fictional text in the Bibliothek der Frauenfrage series, Schirmacher’s excerpts of Emma Hosken Woodward’s book went well with the argumentative style of the other pieces that posed questions like ‘what is women’s emancipation’ or attacked the movement’s opponents.⁸⁹

Whereas the translated text’s focus on professional women matched Kettler’s political agenda, the stress on prostitution reflected Schirmacher’s commitment to the international abolitionist movement.⁹⁰ A more personal tendency was her repudiation of matrimony, in which she differed from Kettler, whose marriage was said to have been a happy one. From a very young age, Schirmacher had told her family that since ‘women like me do not usually marry’ (Frauen wie ich verheirathen [sic] sich gewöhnlich nicht) she wanted to keep her freedom, study and earn her own living.⁹¹ Although the notion of the time was that this feeling would dissolve the moment the right husband appeared, Schirmacher stood by her conviction. More and more, she identified as a ‘new species’ inhabiting a ‘place between man and woman’ (einen Platz zwischen Mann und Frau) that should be given as much as possible of the freedom men enjoyed.⁹²

From a political perspective, she also criticised heterosexual marriage sharply for all the injustice it entailed for the female partner.⁹³ Clearly, Woodward’s storyline reconciling marital love and feminist activism was not to Schirmacher’s liking. Confronted with the requirement to shorten the text, it comes as no surprise that she cut out the romantic part.

The decision to transform the novel the way that she did, however, is not only to be read as an expression of Schirmacher’s personal attitude but also as an indication of the nature and aims of the translation. Given the character of the English book (published by the author’s husband as a token of remembrance) and of the context of the publication of the translation (in a series of political treatises), it was unlikely that the project was an economic venture. To flag the original book and its publisher in the introduction (as Schirmacher did) was probably the only obligation she and Kettler had committed to in exchange for the right to translate the book. It is also unlikely that even if there was a contract, Schirmacher received a noteworthy fee for her translation or an income from the publication. Literary ambition and economic interests may have played a role at the beginning of the process of translating the novel but when the text finally came out in Germany it was, more than anything else, a political statement. In alignment with Maria Tymoczko’s definition of ‘activist translation’ as a practice oriented towards the intended effect in the target culture rather than fidelity to the source text, the way Schirmacher dealt with Men, Women and Progress can be interpreted both as an activist translation and as a specific intervention targeting the women’s movement in Germany.⁹⁴

A Transcultural Literary Exchange

When, after her illness and resulting personal crisis in 1889, Käthe Schirmacher had to make a new life plan, becoming a translator seems to have been a possibility. However, it was one of several perspectives. To earn some money without endangering her throat, she developed a system of teaching French through correspondence.⁹⁵ During the years back in her hometown of Danzig, she became a well-connected women’s rights activist and started writing both journalistic and literary texts. By 1893, when her German translations from Emma Hosken Woodward’s last book were finally published, Schirmacher had already made herself a name as an author. Whereas the young woman who had come across the novel in 1888 was an aspiring if naïve student and teacher abroad dreaming of a university career in the USA, the personality who successfully published her first translation of a literary text was an experienced writer who had brought out two books and a number of articles.⁹⁶ It is, however, worth reflecting on how Woodward’s narrative influenced Schirmacher’s first literary work, the novella Die Libertad (1891).⁹⁷ Published anonymously two years before the translation of Men, Women and Progress, it was later characterised as the first German female student novel.⁹⁸

The novella has certain similarities with Woodward’s book. Schirmacher not only adopted parts of the latter’s narrative strategies and storylines, but Die Libertad can also be read as a sequel to Men, Women and Progress and a response to its central message, with its plot also featuring many similarities. A young woman known by the nickname ‘Phil’ visits her friend Charlotte at her temporary summer residence in a scenic landscape. Travelling alone and arriving on foot at the beginning of the story, Schirmacher’s Phil, like Woodward’s Madeline, stands for independence and female autonomy. Located in a lonely place in the Black Forest, Charlotte’s house with its relaxed and informal atmosphere resembles Crag’s Nest. Here, also, a series of talks on the women’s movement among the house’s temporary inhabitants is at the centre of the narrative. Woodward’s references to German books, and Schirmacher’s citations of English texts as well as short, untranslated French phrases, serve as symbols for open-mindedness and transnational communication. In both books, the central characters are former fellow students exchanging memories and telling each other how they have fared since those days. While the remote location of both houses symbolises distance from the society and its constraints and injustices, the outsider position of the protagonists in Schirmacher’s novella is more clearly emphasised by the house’s name ‘Libertad’ that alludes to a foreign country, a place of freedom, a refuge. And a refuge it is for the painter Ann-Marie, another friend from Charlotte’s and Phil’s college days, who has fallen fatally ill. Her condition is, as the narrative suggests, a consequence of the strains she has imposed on herself for the sake of her art. She is portrayed both as a proud character who despite hardship will not ask for help and as a fallen woman. It remains unclear whether she has lost her respectability because of an illegitimate sexual relationship or if the circumstances of her life simply reflect her destitution.

Schirmacher’s critical reply to Emma Hosken Woodward’s romance of progress culminates in the character of this promising young artist, who dies at the end of the book. The question remains as to how her hopes, and those of many other gifted women, are to be fought for by activists like Phil, Charlotte, and Charlotte’s supportive husband Kent. There are two answers in the novella, a political and a personal one. At the political level, Schirmacher puts the spotlight on prostitution, which in her opinion is at the centre of women’s exploitation and lack of rights. Together, the three activists of the ‘Libertad’ write a book about prostitution that they intend should reveal the facts and shake up the public. That this was an extremely avant-garde position in Germany in the early 1890s is made clear by fellow radical Minna Cauer’s (1841–1921) reaction to the novella. She saw Schirmacher standing on a ‘cliff edge’ (auf dem vorgeschobensten Felsen).⁹⁹ What was so radical about Schirmacher’s narrative was the fact that she used the character of the artist Ann-Marie to unite two questions that the middle-class women’s movement sought to keep neatly apart: the access of middle-class women to the professions and the situation of working-class women, who were often forced into some form of prostitution to fend for themselves.

The character Charlotte, who has become a lawyer and is married to a fellow advocate in a US city where both are involved in welfare politics, also recalls Madeline, who was about to wed future peer Henry and build public welfare institutions with him at the end of Woodward’s book. In the talks between Charlotte and Phil, the latter dissects her friend’s marital happiness, distinguishing the professional aspect of the relationship and its practicality for the couple on the one hand, and love for the intimate partner on the other. The emotional aspect of the relationship, she argues, is based on a freely-made decision possible only because Charlotte’s independence had been established beforehand. For Schirmacher’s alter ego Phil, however, marriage is not an option. Her development from a stubborn rebel, always prone to vocal outrage, to a focused strong personality waiting for political change and her chance in the world, is central to the narrative. Whereas Woodward had imagined a romantic solution to the challenging contradictions strong-minded women had to deal with, Schirmacher’s novella ends rather gloomily with Anne-Marie’s death and Phil’s determination to be prepared for whatever fate will throw at her. She expresses this attitude in a famous quote from Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Ripeness is all’ (Reifsein ist alles).

The two books, published in two different countries and languages, share the question of how women who, against all odds, have achieved an academic education, can develop their lives and careers after graduation. Schirmacher’s answer, published in Zurich in 1891, was less pleasant than Woodward’s feminist romance of 1885. According to Schirmacher, the future for female academics was grim and uncertain, at least in Germany. Precisely, this realistic attitude presumably won her the most enthusiastic followers among her readers, with whom she sought contact in her book, where a note at the end stated that letters to the author would be forwarded by the editor.¹⁰⁰ Schirmacher’s growing network of correspondence won her publicity and encouraged her to publish a second book, the novel Halb (Halfway, 1893), in her own name.¹⁰¹ Most probably, it also secured the connections that, finally, made it possible to publish at least excerpts from Woodward’s novel in Germany.

The referral to Shakespeare in the concluding scene of Die Libertad is only one of several references to the English literary canon and is interesting in more than one respect. It recalls Schirmacher’s formative phase in Kew, where she shared the enthusiasm for a book by Edward Dowden (1843–1913) on Shakespeare with Amelia Hartley.¹⁰² In a key passage of Die Libertad, Phil quotes a long paragraph from this very book. It can be read as an allusion to translation, as Schirmacher launches the German quotation with the remark ‘she read in English’. What follows, however, is a German version of a long passage from the same work in which the author connects the play Timon of Athens with Shakespeare’s life, arguing that Shakespeare had overcome his strong passions as well as his bitterness and had put this formative experience into the character of Timon. In Die Libertad, the crucial scene starts with Phil’s autobiographical confession to Charlotte about having mastered her bitterness, which clearly reflects Schirmacher’s own experience in England in 1888/89. Timon/Shakespeare and Phil/Schirmacher converge into a symbolic character that through its growing ‘ripeness’ survives and prevails against all odds. The free and elegant German rendering of Dowden’s text, however, differs significantly from the more literal German translation of the same book by Wilhelm Wagner published in 1879.¹⁰³ Obviously, Schirmacher had created a new version, thereby revealing her expertise as a translator. When she sent the book to Edward Dowden, he thanked her politely for ‘making new friends for me in Germany’ with Die Libertad.¹⁰⁴ However, no commission for a translation of an academic article or book ensued.

Translating for Money

We know of only one academic translation by Schirmacher, of excerpts from German books for the personal use of a French scholar.¹⁰⁵ She did, however, undertake translations of literary works later in her life. Those were assignments she accepted for money and, clearly, she did not intervene with the content in the same way as she had done with Men, Women and Progress. Apart from shorter pieces published in journals, we know of two other novels, both romantic stories narrated from a female perspective: Mariage romanesque by Belgian writer Marguerite Poradowska (1848–1937) and The Reflections of Ambrosine by British bestselling author Elinor Glyn (1864–1943).¹⁰⁶ In July 1903, thirty-eight-year-old Schirmacher wrote to her mother that she had been ‘ferociously industrious’ as the publisher Engelhorn from Stuttgart had asked her to translate Mariage romanesque from French into German. As she also confided in that letter, she had rather amused herself with the inventive story and had had the ‘stuff’ (Krempel) ready within ten days (although eventually, her translation was not published until 1906 due to the publisher prioritising other projects¹⁰⁷). Her fingers, however, ached after the exertion.¹⁰⁸ The ‘stuff’ and its message, it seems, was not worth getting involved in too deeply; Schirmacher only wanted to get it done as fast as possible. Obviously, Engelhorn was content with the result, as in October 1903 he enquired if Schirmacher was willing to translate another book, this time from English. ‘We are on very good terms’, Schirmacher wrote to her mother in that language.¹⁰⁹ This second commission, a translation of Elinor Glyn’s highly successful third novel The Reflections of Ambrosine (1902), was published by Engelhorn in 1904 as part of the publisher’s series of translations of successful French and English novels, ‘Engelhorn’s General Novel Library’ (Engelhorns Allgemeine Romanbibliothek).¹¹⁰ Most likely, he was eager to secure the promising book for his series as soon as possible and Schirmacher’s swiftness in translating contributed to the ‘good terms’ between the two of them. The series became the financial backbone of the publishing house and soon was to finance other more risky and costly enterprises.¹¹¹

We do not have the contracts between Engelhorn and Schirmacher, but we know about her working routines, as they are documented in her diary. She often translated for some hours in the early morning, before breakfast. After having taken care of her various tasks as a journalist, writer, and activist during the day, she usually resumed translating in the evening. In the first stages of an assignment she also jotted down how many (hand-written) pages she could produce daily (she translated twenty pages of Poradowska’s book on the first day, even forty on the next day in July 1903).¹¹² From the way in which Schirmacher used her diary over many years as a tool to organise her working process, we can suppose that there was a practical and economical background for how she wrote about her translation work; by recording her progress, she could both better coordinate it with her many other tasks and know if a specific assignment was worth the effort economically. While she manifestly appreciated translating novels as a comfortable way to earn money and later took on (smaller) literary translation tasks, she never made it her main source of income.

Constellations of Translation and Transnational Transfer

In this chapter, I analyse translations as cultural objects that circulate between languages and movement cultures. I take the case of a rather particular English novel of the 1880s and its (partial) translation into German as a starting point to explore the milieus, the dynamics, and the practices of transnational transfers between European women’s movements of the late nineteenth century and to analyse different forms of translation. In so doing, I argue that to analyse the political and social contexts in which a text is translated as well as its relation to other, accompanying forms of transfer, is a prerequisite to understanding the character and the rationale of a specific translation.

The significant thematic shift in Schirmacher’s translation of an English novel can be read as an indicator of commonalities and differences between German and English women’s movements, while her de-contextualising cuts transform a quite specific documentation of conflicts on gender issues in British politics into a more general statement on women’s emancipation applicable in many different contexts. At the same time, the German text strengthens the focus on prostitution and suppresses the issue of woman suffrage and, thereby, supplants one type of radicalism with another. However, there is also strong evidence for many commonalities of the milieus of reception. For example, despite differing connotations of the concepts of evolution and progress, the shared idea of cultural hierarchy and different paces of progress in gender relations are evident in start and target text.

We can infer, too, from the fact that Schirmacher published a novella and a novel on similar issues in the same period, and that a story on the ‘woman question’ in the style of Emma Hosken Woodward’s novel would have been well received in German-speaking countries. Its transformation into a short treatise was thus probably less a result of a lack of audience but of the difficulty in finding a publisher willing to bear the financial risk of a translation of the entire text. The exemplary cases of two popular novels written for a mass audience that Schirmacher translated for money show the differences in both content and translational practice between activist translation and products aimed at commercial success.

To more fully understand the meaning of a particular translation, however, it is essential to contextualise it with other forms of transcultural mediation between the start text’s and the target text’s audiences and their milieus. In this context, Schirmacher’s novella Die Libertad, which represents a continuation of and a response to Woodward’s Men, Women and Progress—the book that Schirmacher had translated—can be seen as an elaborate intertextual and transnational communication, revealing the complex cultural exchanges inherent in Schirmacher’s translation and writing activities alike.

Notes

• 1. Anthony Pym, ‘Humanizing Translation History’, Hermes—Journal of Language and Communication Studies 42 (2009), 23–48; Andrea Rizzi, Birgit Lang, and Anthony Pym, What Is Translation History? A Trust-Based Approach (Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot, 2019).

• 2. Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, Translation History, 1.

• 3. Emma Hosken Woodward, Men, Women, and Progress, ed. Bernard Barham Woodward (London: Dulau & Co., 1885).

• 4. Käthe Schirmacher, Die Libertad. Novelle (Zürich: J. Schabelitz, 1891).

• 5. Woodward, Men.

• 6. On the mediation of feminist theory in Victorian novels see Miriam Wallraven, A Writing Halfway between Theory and Fiction (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007); on domestic fiction: Elaine Freedgood, ‘Domestic Fiction’, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, vol 2, ed. David Scott Kastan (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2006).

• 7. Anonymous (Emma Hosken), Married for Money (London: Samuel Tinsley, 1875); Anonymous (Emma Hosken), Bitter to Sweet End (London: Samuel Tinsley, 1877); having married a remote cousin, Emma’s birth name as well as her first married name was Hosken.

• 8. ‘[H]e was under control, and no one knew this better than his wife’, Woodward, Men, 30.

• 9. UCL-Bloomsbury Project, accessed 6 January 2021, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/east_grinstead_nuns.htm; ‘Author: Emma Hosken Woodward’, At the Circulating Library. A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901’, accessed 6 January 2021, http://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_author.php?aid=2579.

• 10. That Woodward most probably had personal knowledge about various forms of writing for money is also indicated by a side-story in her last book. Nellie and Madeline talk about a former fellow student who lacked the money to finish her studies and started anonymously writing sermons for money on a regular basis. Woodward, Men, 114.

• 11. ‘Publisher: Samuel Tinsley’, At the Circulating Library. A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901, accessed 15 June 2022, http://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_publisher.php?pid=15.

• 12. Richard Menke, ‘The End of the Three-Volume Novel System, 27 June 1894’, accessed 6 January 2021, https://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=richard-menke-the-end-of-the-three-volume-novel-system-27-june-1894.

• 13. ‘Mr. B. B. Woodward’, The Times, October 30, 1930, 19.

• 14. Woodward, Men, V.

• 15. Ibid., VI.

• 16. Ibid., III.

• 17. ‘Dulau & Co’, The British Museum, 16 accessed June 2022, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG25858.

• 18. For a later collaboration between B. B. Woodward and Dulau see Bernard Barham Woodward, Catalogue of the British Species of Pisidium (Recent & Fossil) in the Collections of the British Museum (Natural History), with Notes on Those of Western Europe (London: Printed by Order of the Trustees, 1913).

• 19. A hand-written dedication ‘With the publishers’ compliments’ in a library copy points in the same direction.

• 20. Filomena, ‘Lady’s London Letter’, Shields Daily News, August, 21, 1885; republished as ‘Woman’s Position in Life’ (From a Lady Correspondent), The Northern Daily Mail, Hartlepole, August 22, 1885.

• 21. Ibid.

• 22. Anonymous, ‘New Books and Reprints’, Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, London, March 7, 1885.

• 23. For comparative perspectives see Lucy Delap, Feminisms: A Global History (London: Penguin Books, 2020); Karen Offen, European Feminisms 1700–1950. A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000).

• 24. Theodore Stanton, ed., The Woman Question in Europe: A Series of Original Essays, (New York et al.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1884).

• 25. Maria G. Grey, ‘The Women’s Educational Movement’, in The Woman Question in Europe: A Series of Original Essays, ed. Theodore Stanton (New York et al.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1884), 30–62, at 42–5. See also: Sophie Forgan, ‘Eine angemessene Häuslichkeit? Frauen und die Architektur der Wissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert’, trans. Kira Kosnick’, in Zwischen Vorderbühne und Hinterbühne. Beiträge zum Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehungen in der Wissenschaft vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Theresa Wobbe (Bielefeld: Transkript, 2003), 137–57.

• 26. Donald L. Opitz, ‘Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, Country House Science, and Personae for British Women in Science at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, European Journal of Life Writing 11 (2022), WG13–WG43, Cluster: ‘When Does the Genius do the Chores? Knowledge, Auto/Biography and Gender’, https://ejlw.eu/article/view/38784/36264.

• 27. Johanna Gehmacher, Elisa Heinrich, and Corinna Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher: Agitation und autobiografische Praxis zwischen radikaler Frauenbewegung und völkischer Politik (Vienna et al.: Weimar: Böhlau, 2018), 531.

• 28. Ibid., 531.

• 29. Nl Sch 312/011, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 15 June 1888.

• 30. Nl Sch 718/026, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 16 August 1887.

• 31. Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 531.

• 32. Nl Sch 312/015, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 6 July 1888; Nl Sch 995/002, Blackburnehouse-Highschool to KS, 8 August 1888 [employment contract].

• 33. Nl Sch 312/016, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 12 July 1888.

• 34. Nl 470/008, Amelia Hartley to KS, 19 November 1888.

• 35. Ibid.

• 36. Nl Sch 922/002, diary, 5 September 1888: ‘Départ de Kew, c'était très dur; “je travaillerai pour vous” “Ripeness is all.”’ The famous quote from King Lear, obviously, reflected Amelia’s and Kate’s shared reading of classical works. As a guide to Shakespeare’s work they particularly enjoyed Edward Dowden, Shakspere. A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (London, 1875). See Amelia Hartley to KS, 12 October 1888, see also Käthe Schirmacher, Flammen. Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Leipzig: Dürr&Weber, 1921), 18.

• 37. Nl Sch 312/028, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 24 October 1888. With Julie Barbezat she had started translating together three years before, ‘one being the competent master, the other the pupil’: Nl Sch 905/023, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 23 July 1885.

• 38. Nl Sch 470/ 007, 008, Amelia Hartley to KS, 24 October 1888, 19 November 1888; see also: Ruth Hoberman, ‘Women in the British Museum Reading Room during the Late-Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: From Quasi- to Counterpublic’, Feminist Studies 28, no. 3 (2002), 489–512.

• 39. Nl Sch 470/,005, 006 007, Amelia Hartley to KS, 28 September 1888, 12 October 1888, 24 October 1888.

• 40. Nl Sch 312/026, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 10 October 1888; ‘Vokins, Kate’, MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, accessed 30 December 2020, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Davis/Names/Vokins_Kate.html.

• 41. Nl Sch 312/035, 312/037 KS to Clara Schirmacher, 29 January and 27 February 1889.

• 42. Nl Sch 1000/024, Arthur Bradley to KS, 14 May 1889: Rathbone-Prize for English Literature for Käthe Schirmacher.

• 43. Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 100–103.

• 44. Example Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Newnham’, Nationalzeitung, 12 July 1891; Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Ann Clough’, Neue Bahnen. Organ des allgemeinen deutschen Frauenvereins 27, no. 12 (15 June 1892).

• 45. Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Korrespondenz-Lehrzirkel’, Die Lehrerin in Schule und Haus 6, no. 19 1889/1890.

• 46. Nl 312/057, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 17 September 1889.

• 47. Example Woodward, Men, 207, 302–303, 258.

• 48. Ibid., 105.

• 49. Ibid., 163.

• 50. Ibid., 209.

• 51. Emma Hosken Woodward, Männer, Frauen und Fortschritt. Aus dem Englischen von [from English by] Käthe Schirmacher (Weimar, 1893).

• 52. Woodward, Männer, 5.

• 53. Woodward, Men, 89–91.

• 54. Woodward, Men, 94, 126.

• 55. Gisela Bock, ‘Das politische Denken des Suffragismus: Deutschland um 1900 im internationalen Vergleich’, in Gisela Bock, Geschlechtergeschichten der Neuzeit. Ideen, Politik, Praxis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 168–203.

• 56. Woodward, 202.

• 57. Ibid., 207–208.

• 58. Ibid., 207; it was not before the turn of the century that a German branch of the movement was founded. See Bettina Kretzschmar, ‘Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht für Mann und Frau’: Der deutsche Zweig der Internationalen abolitionistischen Bewegung (1899–1933) (Sulzbach: Helmer, 2014).

• 59. Woodward, Men, 372.

• 60. Woodward, Männer, 82.

• 61. Woodward, Men, 351, Hosken Woodward, Männer, 71.

• 62. Woodward, Men, 353.

• 63. Ibid., 372.

• 64. Andreas Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert. Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit 1848–1914 (Berlin and Boston: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2018).

• 65. Woodward, Men, 355, Hosken Woodward, Männer, 73.

• 66. Woodward, Men, 5, 15–17.

• 67. Ibid., 67, 145.

• 68. Ibid., 6, 22, 239, 248, 252, 273.

• 69. Strong-minded women are described as ‘passion-blinded’ (Hosken Woodward, Men, 15) and ‘eccentric’ (Ibid. 152), as ‘clamouring for their rights’ (Ibid. 249) and looking ‘upon men as enemies’ (Ibid. 5). In other instances they figure as ‘practical, sensible, self-reliant’ (Ibid. 248).

• 70. Woodward, Men, 154.

• 71. Ibid., 248.

• 72. Eliza Theodora Minturn, An Interior View of Girton College, Cambridge (London: London Association of Schoolmistresses), 7.

• 73. Helene Lange, Frauenbildung (Berlin: L.Oehmigke ‘s Verlag, 1889), 19; see on the concept of emancipation Gisela Bock, ‘Begriffsgeschichten: “Frauenemanzipation” im Kontext der Emanzipationsbewegungen des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Gisela Bock, Geschlechtergeschichten der Neuzeit. Ideen, Politik, Praxis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 100–52.

• 74. Woodward, Men, 5.

• 75. Ibid., 160.

• 76. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch vol. X,II,I (1919), Sp. 904, Z. 18.

• 77. Woodward, Men, 154, 160; Woodward, Männer, 14, 19.

• 78. Nl Sch 313/023, Otto Münsterberg to KS, 22 April 1894.

• 79. Gottfried Keller, Sämtliche Werke in sieben Bänden. vol 3: Der grüne Heinrich. Zweite Fassung, ed. Peter Villwock (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996), 788.

• 80. Woodward, Men, 87; Woodward, Männer, 38.

• 81. Nl Sch 312/057, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 17 September 1889.

• 82. Nl Sch 922/002, diary 1888, 121: G[wendoline] M[ary] Hosken, Roxwell Vicarage.

• 83. Nl 470/019, Amelia Hartley to KS, 8 September 1891. Till now, we could not find the correspondence with B.B. Woodward in Schirmacher’s papers.

• 84. Marianne Schmidbaur, ‘Hedwig Kettler und der Verein Frauenbildung Reform’, in Mütterlichkeit als Profession? Lebensläufe deutscher Pädagoginnen in der ersten Hälfte dieses Jahrhunderts, ed. Ilse Brehmer (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1990); see also Martina Nieswandt, ‘Hedwig Kettler (1851–1937)’, in Erziehung und Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechts. Eine kommentierte Quellensammlung zur Bildungs- und Berufsbildungsgeschichte von Mädchen und Frauen, eds. Elke Kleinau and Christine Mayer, vol 1 (Weinheim: Dt. Studien-Verlag, 1996), 123.

• 85. J J. Kettler, Was wird aus unseren Töchtern? (Weimar: Weimarer Verlagsanstalt, 1889); on Kettler see Elke Kleinau, ‘Gleichheit oder Differenz? Theorien zur höheren Mädchenbildung’, in Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung, vol 2: Vom Vormärz bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Elke Kleinau and Claudia Opitz (Frankfurt/M., New York: Campus, 1996), 125–27.

• 86. ‘Editor’s Notice. Was wird aus unseren Töchtern? Von Frau Kettler’, Women’s Penny Paper, June 22, 1889; on The Women’s Penny Paper/The Woman’s Herald and its multilingual editor Henrietta Mueller/Helena Temple see Michelle Elizabeth Tusan, Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain (Chesham: Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 2005), 136–70.

• 87. ‘Interview. Madame Kettler’, Woman’s Herald, January 9, 1892, 1.

• 88. Ibid.

• 89. J. Kettler, Was ist Frauenemanzipation? (Weimar: Weimarer Verlagsanstalt, 1891); J. Kettler, Streiflichter auf unserer Gegner (Weimar: Weimarer Verlagsanstalt, [without year]).

• 90. Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 326–350 (Oesch).

• 91. Nl Sch 718/009, KS to Richard Schirmacher, 9 July 1886; see also Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 201 (Heinrich).

• 92. Nl Sch 017/055, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 16 April 1895.

• 93. Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Die Journalistin und Schriftstellerin Dr. Käthe Schirmacher schreibt’, in Ehe-Ideale und Ideal-Ehen. Äusserungen moderner Frauen, auf Grund einer Rundfrage, ed. Rosika Schwimmer (Berlin: Continent, 1905), 63–4.

• 94. Maria Tymoczko, ‘The Space and Time of Activist Translation’, in Translation, Resistance, Activism, ed. Maria Tymoczko (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 227–54, at 234.

• 95. Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Korrespondenz-Lehrzirkel’, Die Lehrerin in Schule und Haus 6, no. 19 1889/1890.

• 96. Käthe Schirmacher, Halb. Roman (Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1893); her journalistic articles appeared both in movement journals and in daily newspapers.

• 97. Schirmacher, Libertad.

• 98. Romana Weiershausen, Wissenschaft und Weiblichkeit. Die Studentin in der Literatur der Jahrhundertwende (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), 61–2.

• 99. Nl Sch 309/003, Minna Cauer to KS, 5 June 1891.

• 100. Schirmacher, Libertad, 81.

• 101. Schirmacher, Halb.

• 102. Dowden, Shakspere; Nl Sch 312/016, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 12 July 1888.

• 103. Woodward, Männer, 76; Dowden, Shakspere, 341; Edward Dowden, Shakspere, sein Entwicklungsgang in seinen Werken, mit Bewilligung des Verfassers übersetzt von Wilhelm Wagner [translated with the author’s permission] (Heilbronn: Henninger, 1879), 287.

• 104. Nl Sch 309/008, Edward Dowden to KS, 17 September 1891. For more detail on the book and its reception Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 107–118.

• 105. Nl Sch 011/017, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 10 May 1896.

• 106. Marguerite Poradowska, Mariage romanesque (Paris: Plon, 1903); Elinor Glyn, Reflections of Ambrosine (London: Duckworth & Co, 1902); on Poradowska see Anne Arnold, ‘Marguerite Poradowska as Conrad’s Friend and Adviser’, The Conradian. The Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (U.K) 34 (2009), 68–83; on Glyn as a bestselling author and film writer see Vincent L. Barnett, Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); see also: ‘Elinor Glyn in Tauchnitz Editions’, Paperbackrevolution, accessed 16 June 2022, https://paperbackrevolution.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/elinor-glyn-in-tauchnitz-editions/.

• 107. Marguerite Poradowska, Eine romantische Heirat. Aus dem Französischen von [from French by] Käthe Schirmacher (Stuttgart: Engelhorn, 1906).

• 108. Nl Sch 121/021, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 26 July 1903.

• 109. Nl Sch 121/029, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 13 October 1903.

• 110. Elinor Glyn, Ambrosines Tagebuch. Aus dem Englischen von [from English by] Käthe Schirmacher. (Stuttgart: Engelhorn, 1904).

• 111. E. Henze, ‘Engelhorn Verlag”, Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens Online, accessed 23 February 2021, http://dx-doi-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/10.1163/9789004337862__COM_050388.

• 112. Nl Sch 922/009, diary, 12–22 July 1903.