Unaware of systematic sexist bias, older studies value women writers as a result of their connections to known (male) authors. This is especially the case for Sophie von La Roche, Sophie Schubert Mereau Brentano, and Caroline von Lengefeld Beulwitz Wolzogen, as well as some significant authors of the period outside of this study, such as Dorothea Mendelsohn Veit-Schlegel and Bettina von Brentano Arnim. However, Gallas and Runge list 110 women writers with 396 independent publications between 1771 and 1810. Of this sizable group, some female authors did develop within social networks of literary culture with a prominent (male) author. Other women wrote outside of such privileged networks, and there are still other historical authors about whom we know very little (Fischer). While relationships between female and male authors should not define the significance of their writing, such biographical connections may be very interesting. Because of the history of critics connecting their works to their lives, I offer slightly fuller biographies of Mereau and Wolzogen.

Fischer, Caroline (1764–1842)

Caroline Fischer belongs to the subgroup that utilizes “the inconsistency of contemporary discourse” prohibiting women's creative writing “to authorize their own writing practice.” Fischer is not the ancillary of a father-scholar, an artist-husband, or poet-brother. In fact, she alone bargained confidently with her publishers for higher fees based on her importance as demonstrated by market forces. She was, in a sense, self-authorized, especially in comparison to Rebeur Wobeser, though arguably no more than La Roche. And, as interesting as her biography is, based on the independence of her activity, scholars have fewer historic documents because of this. That is to say, if her brother-in-law had been a famous poet or author, we may have more letters in which she is mentioned and described.

She was born as Caroline Auguste Venturini on August 9, 1764, in the independent German state of Braunschweig-Wölfenbüttel in the city of Braunschweig, home of the prestigious Collegium Carolinum, an institution founded in 1742 “to improve the hearts and minds of young gentlemen.” Her name then changed to Caroline Christiani, after she married a pastor named Christoph Johann Rudolph Christiani in nearby Copenhagen, Denmark.