1764-1803

In the planned nine-volume edition of the letters of Therese Huber (1764-1829), Volume 1 contains those penned by her up to her 40th year, thus documenting the development from late adolescence, through her two marriages (first to Georg Forster, then to Ludwig Ferdinand Huber) and the beginnings of her activity as writer and translator, up to the imminent move of the Huber family to Ulm. The letters are testimonies both of Huber's personal biography and of the times she lived in, and reflect the career of a successful and famous woman in the period around 1800, combining the duties of housewife, wife, and mother with professional activity as a writer and later as an editor. Alongside the development of an individual code of morality, the letters document the progress in Therese Huber's reading behaviour and critical judgment as well as the interests and motivation behind her own literary output. They also provide insights into the social life of the age, notably in Göttingen and Vilnius, but also in Mainz at the time of the French Revolution and the foundation of the first German Republic.