“SOPHIE, SOPHIE, let them talk, and just keep writing,” lady of letters and esteemed Swiss salon host Julie Bondeli instructs her friend Sophie von La Roche shortly after the publication of her first novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771; The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim, 1776). Contemplating the novel's reception, Bondeli writes that the critics likely will say that it possesses no genius because its author is a woman, and a woman could not have genius. Let them talk, she tells La Roche; let us preserve our tact, our sensibility, our understanding, and keep writing. Authoring an additional twenty-seven books, including journals of her travels through Switzerland, France, Holland, and England; moral tales; essay collections; travel fiction; autobiographical works; and the monthly journal for women Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter (1783–84; Pomona for Germany's Daughters), La Roche kept writing even as criticism of her work increased. Her published letters number around sixteen hundred. She promoted and published other women authors, including one represented in this volume: Karoline von Günderrode. And while she let her critics talk, she actively crafted her image as an author. Her writings reflect an awareness of her readers’ curiosity about her intellectual and writing life: she includes an essay entitled “Über meine Bücher” (1793; About My Books) in Pomona, autobiographical sketches in Melusinens Sommer-Abende (1806; Melusine's Summer Evenings), and descriptions of her writing room and table, as well as excerpts from her favorite prose and poetry, in the autobiographical Mein Schreibetisch (1799; My Writing Desk).

One such authorial image La Roche refined over the course of her lifetime is the editorial persona of a mother writing to educate daughters. Called “Mamma” by the likes of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who praised her “häusliche[], mütterliche Glückseligkeit” (domestic, maternal bliss), La Roche cultivated a mythos of maternal literary authority among her contemporary readers. Still in the drafting phase of Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, she describes the novel's protagonist, Sophie Sternheim, as her “phantastische Tochter” (fantastical daughter). Twenty years later in Briefe über Mannheim (1791; Letters on Mannheim), she describes Sophie as a “paper doll” designed to make up for the absence of her own daughters, who had been sent away to boarding school, a story she will repeat again in 1806 in Melusinens Sommer-Abende.