Lewald, FANNY,

Lewald, FANNY, German novelist, was born of Jewish parents at Königsberg, on 24th March 1811, but professed Christianity in her seventeenth year. She began to write when about thirty, and from 1840 lived in Berlin; in 1855 she married Adolf Stahr (1805–76), the literary critic. She died at Dresden on 5th August 1889. Fanny Lewald was perhaps the most important woman novelist in Germany during the middle of the 19th century. She was possessed of keen powers of observation, and wrote in a sober, matter-of-fact style, which, however, was not incompatible with a strong undercurrent of restrained feeling. She was an especially enthusiastic champion of the emancipation of her sex. Her realistic tendencies brought her into conflict with the Countess von Hahn-Hahn, whose unreal sentimentalism she successfully parodied in Diogena (1847). Her best book is perhaps Von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht (1863–65). An English translation of Stella (1884) appeared in the same year. At different times she visited many parts of Europe with her father and her husband; her books on Italy (1847) and Great Britain (1852) were the most valuable outcome of these journeys. See her Meine Lebensgeschichte (6 vols. 1861–63).