1. Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, 1771

Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim was published in 1771 anonymously; however, the prefatory pages name Christoph Martin Wieland as the editor (Herausgeber). Anonymous publication was commonplace and the practice has been much discussed by literary critics, including those attuned to the gender-specific ramifications. As the full title of the first publication makes clear, it makes use of the epistolary ruse that claims not to be fiction but a fact-based personal history: Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim: Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und zuverläßigen Quellen gezogen (The Story of Lady de Sternheim. Assembled by a Friend from Original Papers and Reliable Sources). The novel makes use of a device popular at the time: it pretends the story is not fiction (not written, or written by “nobody”), but rather genuine personal correspondence to pique the interest of a wider reading public. The first printing spanned multiple volumes and years: 1771 and 1772. It has been translated into many languages, including nearly concomitant French and English translations: in French, it appeared in 1773 as “Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Sternheim” and in English in 1775, with a subtitle that misidentified the editor as the author: “Attempted from the German of M. Wieland.” The most recent English translation appeared in 1991 by Christa Baguss Britt. There are two twentieth-century printings that suggest that the novel had some traction among literary canon-makers. First, Kuno Ridderhoff in 1907 (Berlin: B. Behr) reprinted it in the enormous collection of arguably great literature titled: Deutsche Literaturdenkmäler des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Monuments of Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century German Literature). Second, the publishing house of Reclam, which first published the novel in 1938, has offered it since 1986 as one of its well-known, small yellow paperbacks. While some critical attention has been paid to the introduction's mention of the fright that the amateur writer will experience at seeing a printed copy of her story, it also mentions the text's poignancy, its capturing of the true and the beautiful, which are achievements more often expected of an experienced author. The introductory text however stands outside of the narrative; it does not claim to know Fräulein von Sternheim personally, which is one technique used by epistolary authors to add an air of authenticity to their fiction.