La Roche

Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807)La Roche produced a highly successful sentimental novel:

Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim; The Story of Young Lady von Sternheim (1771)

The novel is mainly in epistolary form with short sections of interspersed narrative. The theme of the novel is the virtuous young woman in distress, and it owes much to the work of Samuel Richardson. Sophie von Sternheim’s father was an army officer who married into the nobility. Her aunt Charlotte disapproves of the marriage. Sophie’s parents die, and her aunt conspires to make her the mistress of the prince. At the court she meets two very different Englishmen: the noble, splenetic and melancholic Lord Seymour, and the libertine Lord Derby. She falls in love with the former but marries the latter, in order to escape the prince. After many adventures Sophie and Seymour are finally united.

Meine Erziehung hat mich gelehrt, daß Tugend und Geschicklichkeiten das einzige wahre Glück, und Gutes tun, die einzige wahre Freude eines edlen Herzens sei; das Schicksal aber hat mir den Beweis davon in der Erfahrung gegeben.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/laroche/sternhm/stern36.html

My upbringing has taught me that virtue and skillfulness are the only true happiness, and that doing good is the only true joy for a noble heart; but fate has proved this to me through experience.

Further Reading

Claire Baldwin, The Emergence of the Modern German Novel: Christoph Martin Wieland, Sophie von La Roche, and Maria Anna Sagar (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002)

Elystan Griffiths, ‘Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Women’s Education: The European Dimension of Sophie von La Roche’s Journal Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter (1783-84)’, Oxford German Studies 42:2 (2013), 139-57

Elystan Griffiths, ‘Sophie von La Roche, Shaftesbury and the Problem of Virtue: Inheritance and Self-Creation in Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50:1 (2014), 82-96

Kevin Hilliard, ‘Sophie von La Roche’, in Landmarks in German Women’s Writing, ed. by Hilary Brown (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 43-57

Monica Nenon, ‘Social Theory and Human Welfare: The Political Stance of Sophie von La Roche in her Novels’, Lessing Yearbook 23 (1991), 159-74

Regina Umbach, 'The Role of Anglophilia in Sophie von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771)', German Life and Letters 52:1 (1999), 1-12

Sally A. Winkle, Woman as Bourgeois Ideal: A Study of Sophie von La Roche’s “Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim” and Goethe’s “Werther” (New York: Peter Lang, 1988)

Further Reading in German

Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Meine Liebe zu Büchern: Sophie von La Roche als professionelle Schriftstellerin (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008)

Barbara Becker-Cantarino and Gudrun Loster-Schneider, “Ach, wie wünschte ich mir Geld genug, eine Professur zu stiften”. Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807) im literarischen und kulturpolitischen Feld von Aufklärung und Empfindsamkeit (Tübingen: Francke, 2010)