Letters from Early Romanticism
Annotated English Translation
Illustrated Electronic Edition

 

“Caroline was the innermost intellectual center of the Jena circle, and her letters constitute part of the essential documentation of Early Romanticism.” — Fritz Martini

“Caroline Schelling ranks first among all the literary women of the time; her graceful, chatty letters are full of good sense and imagination, of refined malice and charming raillery, and their clear yet thoughtful descriptions, their charming language, and their hidden poetry raise them to the level of true works of art.” — Wilhelm Scherer

“She is not merely a master, but genuinely a genius in letter writing; her letters are completely herself, always just as light and graceful and, should the moment or subject matter so dictate, also just as substantial and profound.” — Kuno Fischer

“One of the greatest epistolary geniuses Germany has produced.” — Wilhelm Scherer

“The fool! In her position she would be better advised to learn how to prepare a good soup and do laundry properly.” — Henriette von Hoven

“Mamsell Michaelis is — a bit wild.” — Writer and editor Heinrich Christian Boie, after seeing fifteen-year-old Caroline at a ball for the first time since she was ten years old

“Please extend a thousand greetings from me to your diminutive, charming wife. Tell her that the moments I spent in both your company in Weimar count among the most interesting in my entire life.” — Writer Johann Daniel Falk in a letter to Wilhelm Schlegel

“That most disgraceful and shameful of all creatures.” — Classical scholar Christian Gottlob Heyne, referring to Caroline in a letter to his daughter Therese Forster

“Just do not let yourself be intimidated by Madam Schlegel. She is not really all that bad a woman.” — Philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte in a letter to Johanne, his wife, in Jena

“She is wasteful to an astonishing degree, but at once also stingy, full of pretention, presumptuous, imperious, importunate, critical and disparaging, posh, vain, arrogant, full of lust and cramps, in love, vengeful, always drinks one too many — In a word: she is an ugly animal!” — Henriette von Hoven in a letter to Charlotte Schiller

“Oh, that woman! — Dorothea Veit in a letter to the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher

“I need not deny that Madam Schlegel had me at her feet in the first fifteen minutes.” — Swedish envoy Karl Gustav von Brinckmann in a letter to Rahel Levin