Background
Fanny Lewald was born at Königsberg in East Prussia in 1811 to a bourgeois, Jewish family.
Fanny Lewald was born at Königsberg in East Prussia in 1811 to a bourgeois, Jewish family.
She was taken out of school at thirteen to learn household skills she would need as a wife. However, her betrothed died before the wedding took place. She traveled in the German Confederation, France and Italy.
In 1845, she settled at Berlin.
Lewald first received attention for her writing after the publication of a letter she wrote about a court trial she had attended. August then asked Fanny to write a report on the coronation of King Frederick William IV in Konigsberg in 1840.
Fanny Lewald went on to become a prolific writer and publish many successful novels. Her writing often drew from her experience growing up female in a bourgeois family, advocating for better education for women and criticizing marriages of convenience.
In 1876, after Stahr"s death, she moved to Dresden, where she engaged in literary work until her death on August 5, 1889.
Among the best known of her novels are:
Klementine (1843)
Jenny (1843)
Prinz Louis Ferdinand (1849. 2nd ed, 1859)
Das Mädchen von Hela (1860)
Von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht (8 vols, 1863–1865)
Nella (1870)
Die Erlöserin (1873)
Benvenuto (1875)
Stella (1883. English transport by B Marshall, 1884)
Of her writings in defence of the emancipation of women, Osterbriefe für die Frauen (1863) and Für und wider die Frauen (1870) are conspicuous.
She also wrote sketches of traveling
Her autobiography, Meine Lebensgeschichte (6 vols, 1861–1862), affords glimpses of the literary life of her time.
