
The Amber Witch
Translated by Lady Duff Gordon
Wilhelm Meinhold(Author)
Barbara Burns(Editor)
Texts and Translations (Publisher)
Published on 19. April 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
174 pages
978-1-78188-095-1 (ISBN)
Description
Wilhelm Meinhold's Gothic romance Maria Schweidler: Die Bernsteinhexe (1844) was a seminal German text in the literary landscape of Victorian England. The 1846 English translation by Lady Duff Gordon, entitled The Amber Witch, enjoyed widespread popular success, and Meinhold's suspenseful tale of a guileless young woman, unjustly accused of witchcraft, was hailed as the leading German novel of its day.
Written in the style of a seventeenth-century chronicle, the story appealed to a readership which identified in Meinhold's work echoes of Daniel Defoe, Oliver Goldsmith and Walter Scott. This volume makes available for the first time in a critical edition a literary translation which transformed the German text into a cult classic in English, and suggests ways in which this work resonated with trends in Victorian culture. Duff Gordon's accomplished rendering of what was perceived as an untranslatable text made Meinhold's novel accessible to new generations of readers.
Affording an insight into the devastation of the Thirty Years' War and the superstition and miscarriages of justice which marked the peak of the witch-hunting period in Early Modern Europe, this translation should generate continuing momentum and impact for Meinhold's original German novel.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Modern Humanities Research Association
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
275 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78188-095-1 (9781781880951)
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Schweitzer Classification