7. Writers from Romanov Territories

Notes & Translation ©2025 John Claiborne Isbell, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0458.07

This section is headed Romanov Territories, and central to its narrative is the emergence of national traditions upon that polyglot empire’s extensive western flank. From Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, across modern Russia, people largely speak Russian; but this section also traces the western language communities around which national sentiment in this period played out. Modern Estonia and Latvia were ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1721; Lithuania was acquired in 1795 at the Third Partition of Poland. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia regained independence in 1918–1921. Russo-German occupation of Poland began in 1772–1795 and ended in 1918. In short, these territories were in 1776 either independent or recent acquisitions, though occupied throughout most of our period. Ukraine’s case is somewhat different; most of Ukraine had passed from Polish to Tsarist control in 1667, more being absorbed in the Partitions of Poland; and after brief independence in 1917–1921, Ukraine regained independence in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. Polish territory alone was independent and sovereign during this period, both prior to 1795 and briefly under Napoleon as the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. In today’s Baltic states, my English-language search has identified just one Latvian and one Lithuanian woman writer (both writing in French) and as yet no Estonian woman writer in the period. In occupied Poland, I have found eight women writing in Polish, with one woman in Ukraine writing in Ukrainian. In Russia proper, during this period 1776–1848, I have found thirteen women writers.

Latvia (1 writer)

Beate Barbara Juliane Freifrau von Krüdener [or Julie de Krüdener], née Freiin von Vietinghoff genannt Scheel (22 November 1764–25 December 1824), born in Riga, married Baron Burkhardt Alexis Constantine Krüdener in 1782. Their son’s godfather was the future Tsar Paul. In 1784, Krüdener’s husband became ambassador in Venice, then Munich, then Copenhagen in 1787. Krüdener traveled to Paris in 1789; she fell in love, but the baron refused a divorce. She traveled in Europe, joining the baron in Berlin in 1800; he died in 1802. Krüdener published her novel Valérie in 1803, then fell under the influence of the Moravian Brethren in Riga. She met Tsar Alexander in 1815, helping him found the Holy Alliance. Chateaubriand, Duras, Benjamin Constant, Juliette Récamier attended their Paris prayer meetings. Krüdener’s later appeal for Alexander to liberate Greece was rebuffed.1

Lithuania (1 writer)

Sophie de Choiseul-Gouffier, née Zofia Tyzenhauz (1790–28 May 1878), born in Lithuania, married Antoine Louis Octave de Choiseul-Gouffier in 1818, a French count whose father had emigrated during the French Revolution. Her first historical novel appeared in Warsaw in 1818: Le Polonois à St. Domingue ou La jeune Créole. Later novels appeared in Paris, mostly concerning Polish and Lithuanian history and all in French: Barbe Radziwill. Roman historique, 1820; Vladislas Jagellon et Hedwige, ou la réunion de la Lithuanie à la Pologne. Nouvelle historique, 1824; Le Nain politique. Roman historique, 1827; and Halina Ogińska ou les Suédois en Pologne, 1839. Choiseul-Gouffier also published two volumes of reminiscences: Mémoires historiques sur l’empereur Alexandre et la cour de Russie, 1829, and Réminiscences sur l’empereur Alexandre Ier et sur l’empereur Napoléon Ier, 1862.2

Poland (8 writers)

Klementyna z Tańskich Hoffmanowa

Dziennik Franciszki Krasińskiej w Ostatnich Latach Panowiana Augusta III Pisany (1825)
1 stycznia 1759 r. w Maleszowskim zamku, w poniedziałek

Tydzień temu, w samo święto Bożego Narodzenia, Jmć Dobrodziej Ojciec mój kazał przynieść sobie ogromną księgę, w którą już od lat kilkunastu, obyczajem wszystkich niemal panów polskich, wpisuje własną ręką rozmaite publiczne i prywatne pisma; są w niej mowy, manifesta, uniwersały, listy, paszkwile, wiersze, wszystko porządkiem dat ułożone; pokazywał nam ów zbiór szacowny, czytał niektóre kawałki. Bardzo mi się podobała ta myśl zapisywania ciekawszych zdarzeń i okoliczności, a ponieważ już od lat kilku i po francusku, i po polsku dosyć gładko pisać umiem i niezmiernie pisać lubię, ponieważ i we Francji wiele białych głów podobne rzeczy pisze—przyszło mi na myśl, czybym i ja też coś takiego według możności mojej rozpocząć nie mogła? Uszyłam sobie zatem duży sekstern, umieszczę w nim jak najdokładniej, cokolwiek się mnie i bliskiej mojej rodziny tycze, wspomnę, jak potrafię, o rzeczach publicznych.—Jmć Dobrodziej, jako mężczyzna i człowiek stateczny, niemi wyłącznie swoję księgę zajmuje; on ją układa dla wszystkich, i sposobem poważnym; ja, jako panna nie uczona i młoda, moję ramotę jedynie dla własnej zabawy pisać będę, ale z głowy, szczerze i bez pretensji: będzie to prawdziwy dziennik, bo go prawie co dzień pisać zamyślam. Dziś właśnie Nowy Rok i poniedziałek, wyborna pora do zaczęcia porządnie jakowej rzeczy; już tydzień jak ją w umyśle układam, trzeba raz z nią wystąpić; zaczynam więc: mam czas wolny, nabożeństwo odbyte rano, pacierze pozostale odmówię na nieszporach; jużem ubrana i ufryzowana; właśnie dziesiąta bije na zamkowym zegarze, dwie godziny mam jeszcze do obiadu—napiszę dziś, co tylko wiem o sobie, o rodzinie mojej, o domu naszym, o Rzeczypospolitej, a potem pisać będę kolejno, cokolwiek nam wszystkim ciekawego się przydarzy.3

The Journal of Countess Franciszka Krasinska in the Eighteenth Century [in the Last Years of Augustus III Pisana]
In the Castle of Maleszow, Monday, January 1, 1759.

One week ago—it was Christmas Day—my honored father ordered to be brought to him a huge book, in which for many years he had written in his own hand all the important things which have happened in our country [as is the custom of almost all Polish gentlemen]; also copies of the notable pamphlets, speeches, manifestoes, public and private letters, occasional poems, etc., and having placed everything in the order of its date, he showed us this precious collection and showed us some extracts. I was much pleased with his idea of recording interesting facts and circumstances; and as I know how to write pretty well in Polish and in French, and have heard that in France some women have written their memoirs, I thought, “Why should I not try to do something of the kind?”

So I have made a big copy-book by fastening together many sheets of paper, and I shall note down, as accurately as I am able, everything which may happen to me and to my family, and I shall also mention public affairs as they happen, as far as I may be acquainted with them.

[My father the Benefactor, as a man and a stable person, deals exclusively with them in his book; he arranges it for everyone, and in a serious way; I, as an uneducated and young lady, will write my rubbish just for my own fun, but from my head, honestly and without pretense: it will be a real diary, because I plan to write it almost every day.] Today is New Year’s Day and Monday, a very proper season to begin something new. I am at leisure; the morning Service is finished, I am dressed and my hair is curled; ten is just striking on the castle clock, so I have two hours till dinner time. Well, I begin. [today I will write what I know about myself, about my family, about our house, about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and then I will write, one by one, whatever interesting things happen to us all.]4

The most striking thing about this fictitious diary entry is the opening date: January 1, 1759, a good decade before the First Partition of Poland. Hoffmanowa in 1825, some sixty years later, was writing in a Poland that had been erased from the map in three bites by the greed of its Russian and German neighbors, two of whose three leaders, Frederick and Catherine, history has somewhat conveniently labeled great. One might think of Thucydides and his Melian Dialogue, in which the Athenian envoys tell the citizens of Melos that the strong will oppress the weak because they are able to, after which Athens does exactly that. But unlike the Russians and the Germans, the Athenians were honest about it. A brief Napoleonic interlude brought back a Grand-Duchy of Warsaw; otherwise, Poland waited until 1918 to recover its centuries-old independence. Hoffmanowa published anonymously in a Polish magazine, where her opening date’s political subtext was surely patent to every Polish reader.

In this first diary entry, one or two things occur. First, we learn something of the customs and habits of a Polish gentleman in the reign of Augustus III: he keeps a day-book full of miscellaneous written texts, from poems to lampoons and manifestoes. Second, we learn of his unmarried daughter’s accomplishments—she writes fluent French, though she calls herself “uneducated;” she is devout, going from morning prayers to Vespers; she is modest, referring to her planned diary entries as “rubbish;” and her thoughts are not limited to the private sphere, they extend to the doomed “Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.”

Whereas Němcová in Bohemia puts cottagers onstage, Hoffmanowa in Warsaw chooses a countess. This matters, if Romanticism is indeed the people’s voice; how can Hoffmanowa present the Polish nation in the person of a young countess? The answer is to some extent specific to Poland. Just as Adam Mickiewicz peopled 1834’s Pan Tadeusz with the minor nobility, so the cause of Polish independence, it seems possible to say, was prior to the 1840s primarily an aristocratic movement; the peasantry, unlike the nobility, had little affection for the Commonwealth that had been swallowed. Both Němcová and Hoffmanowa, in short, are symptomatic of their unique sociohistorical context, of their different national traditions.

Let us add as a final note that the male translator of this text deleted at least two topical political remarks in the novel’s opening page. I have reinserted the deleted text [in square brackets], but readers looking for the novel, apparently untranslated in the past century, will of necessity encounter it in versions having their own agendas, like this one, and may in consequence find the author rather brusquely removed from the public sphere to the private. This is not atypical for women authors interpreted by men prior to 1900 or thereabouts. A word of caution thus seems in order.

Elżbieta “Izabela” Dorota Czartoryska, née Flemming (3 March 1746–15 July 1835), born in Warsaw, married Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski in 1761. In Paris in 1772, she met Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, and Voltaire, opening a salon after 1775 at the Czartoryski Palace at Puławy. In 1784, she joined the Patriotic Party; after the Kościuszko Uprising, Tsarina Catherine II took her two sons as hostages. Czartoryska opened a Polish museum at the Czartoryski Palace in 1796, which subsists in Kraków today. Her works include Myśli różne o sposobie zakładania ogrodów [Different Thoughts About How to Create Gardens], 1805, and Pielgrzym w Dobromilu, czyli nauki wiejskie [Pilgrim in Dobromil, or Rural Teachings], c. 1818.5

Princess Maria Czartoryska [formerly Duchess Maria of Württemberg] (15 March 1768–21 October 1854), born in Warsaw, was the daughter of Izabela Czartoryska. She married Duke Louis of Württemberg in 1784, brother of the tsarina and Hetman of the Lithuanian Army in the 1792 war against Russia; she divorced him when his betrayal of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became known. Their son was raised by his father. Maria lived mainly in Warsaw, hosting a salon and in 1816 publishing Poland’s first known psychological novel, Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition. Following the November Uprising of 1830–1831, she moved to Sieniawa in Galicia, then to Paris in 1837. She also composed chamber and vocal music.6

Wirydianna Fiszerowa, née Wirydianna Radolińska, later Wirydianna Kwilecka (1761–1826), born in Wyszyny, married Antoni Kwilecki in 1786, helping to write his speeches at the Four-Year Sejm. Kwilecki divorced Fiszerowa after falling for a fourteen-year-old, and in 1806 she married Stanisław Fiszer, a general who fought in Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Her wit earned her the nickname “the Voltaire in skirts;” she wrote in French, her memoirs first appearing in Polish in 1975. They mention her wide circle of acquaintances, from Frederick II of Prussia to Józef Poniatowski, Izabela Czartoryska, or Tadeusz Kościuszko, whom she adored.7

Klementyna Hoffmanowa, née Klementyna Tańska (23 November 1798–21 September 1845), born in Warsaw, published her first treatise in 1819, A Souvenir After a Good Mother, also editing a children’s magazine. Her several novels include The Letters of Elżbieta Rzeczycka to her friend Urszula, 1824, and The Diary of Countess Françoise Krasinska, 1825, arguing for women’s education and self-empowerment. She taught in girls’ schools and at the Warsaw Governess’s Institute, 1826–1831. Hoffmanowa married Karol Boromeusz Hoffman in 1829; after the November Uprising, the couple left for exile in Paris. There, she joined Prince Adam Czartoryski’s literary society as well as the Benevolent Society of Polish Ladies presided by Adam’s wife. She was a friend of Chopin and Mickiewicz.8

Anna Nakwaska, née Krajewska (28 March 1781–21 October 1851), born in Warsaw, was raised entirely in French. She married the politician Franciszek Salezy Nakwaski; their son later became a political activist. The couple lived in Lipnice but often visited Warsaw, where Nakwaska joined the society in the Copper-Roof Palace. During the Grand-Duchy, she was an inspector of girls’ schools. In 1816, Nakwaska opened a salon; after 1821, she also published novels, children’s stories, and fiction based on the November Uprising, in French and Polish. She left for Switzerland in 1837, returning to visit Lower Silesia in 1844. In 1852, an extract from her memoirs appeared in the Warsaw press; the memoirs have yet to appear in their entirety.9

Tekla Teresa Łubieńska (6 June 1767-August 1810), born in Warsaw, lost her mother at eleven and was then raised in French by her grandmother. She married Feliks Łubieński, a future Minister of Justice, and they had ten children. During the Targowica Confederation, Łubieńska left for Prague, returning in 1785 to the family estate to write and raise her children. During the Four-Year Sejm of 1788–1792, she wrote patriotic verse, but she wrote chiefly comedies before her historical dramas Wanda, Queen of Poland, 1806, and Charlemagne and Wedekind, 1807, produced in Warsaw in 1807–1808. She also translated plays by Racine (Andromaque) and Metastasio (Siroe), and Voltaire’s Candide, though these and other writings remain unpublished. Zacharias Werner published his own Wanda, Königin der Sarmaten in 1810.10

Barbara Urszula Sanguszko, née Dunin (4 February 1718–2 October 1791), orphaned early, was brought up by her stepmother. She was married off in 1735 to the much older Duke Paweł Karol Sanguszko, Grand-Marshal of Lithuania. The couple had ten children. Widowed in 1750, Sanguszko thereafter ran the considerable household, moving to Warsaw after 1763. Every two years, she hosted an enlightenment salon in Poddębice, her guests including Stanisław August Poniatowski, the future king, and Ignacy Krasicki. Sanguszko was known for her philanthropy, restoring churches and founding new religious houses. In 1743, she translated into Polish two religious tracts in French and Italian, then a medical manual, and in 1788, an anti-Voltairean novel, Le Comte de Valmont. She published a Guide for Mothers in 1755 and left some manuscript poetry and correspondence.11

Narcyza Żmichowska [Gabryella] (4 March 1819–24 December 1876), born in Warsaw, became governess to the Zamoyski children in 1838 and went with them to Paris, where her exiled brother helped to radicalize her political and social views. She returned to Poland smoking cigars, finding employment as a governess to the Kisielecki children. In Warsaw, she met other intellectuals, debuting in the magazine Pierwiosnek and writing for other magazines: Pielgrzym, Przegląd Naukowy. She founded a group of suffragettes who took part in anti-Tsarist activities, 1842–1849. In 1849, arrested by the Russians, she was sentenced to three years in prison. Żmichowska’s first novel, Poganka [The Heathen], appeared in 1846, others following. Her correspondence was published in 1960.12

Russia (13 writers)

Evdokiya Petrovna Rostopchina

Насильный брак (1845)
Баллада и аллегория
Посвящается мысленно Мицкевичу

Lascia ch’io piango mia cruda sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà

[…]

Жена

Раба ли я или подруга—

То знает Бог! ... Я ль избрала

Себе жестокого супруга?

Сама ли клятву я дала?

Жила я вольно и счастливо,

Свою любила волю я;

Но победил, пленил меня

Соседей злых набег хищливый.

Я предана, я продана—

Я узница, я не жена!

Напрасно иго роковое

Властитель мнит озолотить;

Напрасно мщенье, мне святое,

В любовь он хочет превратить!

Не нужны мне его щедроты!

Его я стражи не хочу!

Сама строптивых научу

Платить мне честно дань почета.

Лишь им одним унижена,

Я враг ему, я не жена!

Он говорить мне запрещает

На языке моем родном,

Знаменоваться мне мешает

Моим наследственным гербом;

Не смею перед ним гордиться

Старинным именем моим

И предков храмам вековым,

Как предки славные, молиться ...

Иной устав принуждена

Принять несчастная жена.

Послал он в ссылку, в заточенье

Всех верных, лучших слуг моих;

Меня же предал притесненью

Рабов—лазутчиков своих.

Позор, гоненье и неволю

Мне в брачный дар приносит он –

И мне ли ропот запрещен?

Еще ль, терпя такую долю,

Таить от всех ее должна

Насильно взятая жена?13

Forced Marriage
Ballad and Allegory
Dedicated mentally to Mickiewicz

Let me mourn my hard fate,
And let me long for freedom

[…]

Wife

Am I a slave or a girlfriend?

God knows! … Did I choose

An abusive spouse?

Did I take the oath myself?

I lived freely and happily,

I loved my free will;

But the evil neighbors’ attack

Won and captured me.

I’m betrayed, I’m sold –

I’m a prisoner, I’m not a wife!

The ruler thinks to enrich

The fatal yoke in vain;

In vain he wants to convert into love

The revenge which is sacred to me!

I don’t need his generosity!

I don’t want his guarding!

I’ll teach the obstinate person myself

To pay me an honest tribute of honor.

Humiliated only by him alone,

I am his enemy, not his wife!

He forbids me to speak

In my native language,

He doesn’t let me celebrate

My hereditary coat of arms;

In front of him I don’t dare be proud

Of my ancient name

And pray like my noble ancestors

to centuries-old temples …

And the unhappy wife is forced

To adopt a different charter.

He sent into exile, into captivity,

All my faithful, best servants;

Meanwhile, he betrayed me,

leaving me to slaves—his spies.

Shame, persecution, and bondage

He brings me as a marriage gift—

And am I forbidden to lament?

Still, enduring such a fate,

Must a forcibly taken wife

Hide it from everyone?14

Countess Rostopchina’s poem is a good lesson in how to make oneself unpopular. Dedicated to the Polish patriot Adam Mickiewicz, it is, as it says, “an allegory” about Poland’s ongoing subjugation to its Russian masters, in eight nine-syllable rhymed stanzas of ten lines apiece (Alexander Pushkin’s longer Evgenii Onegin stanzas, 1825–1832, alternate nine- and eight-syllable lines). The tsar was furious. It’s a shame not to cite the whole poem: the wife’s four stanzas, given here, respond to four from the old baron complaining about his troublesome wife in their “forced marriage.” The Italian epigraph about longing for freedom is from Georg Friedrich Händel’s London opera Rinaldo, composed in 1711 (it is absent in our cited Soviet edition). Rostopchina has clearly put some thought into her subject.

What then is the wife’s argument? “Am I a slave or a girlfriend,” she opens. She contrasts her, or Poland’s, past freedom and happiness with her new status—betrayed, sold, prisoner. Each stanza ends with a rhetorical flourish: a prisoner, not a wife; an enemy, not a wife; an unhappy wife; a forcibly taken wife. Rostopchina calls the baron “abusive;” she refers to “the evil neighbors’ attack;” she speaks of sacred revenge; she even notes being forbidden to speak in her native language, and adds that her spouse sent “into exile, into captivity, / All my faithful, best servants, leaving me to […] his spies.” One grasps the tsar’s displeasure. Indeed, the allegory, though vivid, is somewhat thinly stretched over the generous indignation Rostopchina puts on the page; signposts like the dedication to Mickiewicz simply provide her highly charged text with an allegorical bullhorn.

One might wonder whether Rostopchina’s gender made this text easier to write. Perhaps so: a woman writing about an abusive marriage has some latitude for indignation, and it is possible that the tsar’s anger would have taken a more punitive turn had the poem’s author been male. As it was, Nicholas I banned her from St Petersburg, the capital, and she spent the rest of his reign in Moscow.

Elizaveta Niklaevna Akhmatova [or Leila] (2 December 1820–12 April 1904), born in Nachalovo, lost her father aged five. In 1842, she sent an unpublished translation to the journalist Osip Senkovsky, and he replied favorably; in 1848, she moved to Saint Petersburg, writing for his journal Library for Reading. In 1856, Akhmatova created her own periodical, Collected Foreign Novels, Novellas, and Stories Translated into Russian, which lasted over twenty years, publishing Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, George Sand, and Emile Zola.15

Varvara Nikolaevna Annenkova (1795–1866), born in Nizhny Novgorod, was the sister of General Nicholas Annenkov and of the poet Ivan Annenkov. Her writing was influenced by her close friend and mentor, Mikhail Lermontov. Her publications include For the Chosen Few, 1844, Poems, 1854–1856, and Charlotte Corday, 1866.16

Yekaterina Alekseyevna Avdeyeva, née Polevaya (16 August 1788–21 July 1865), born in Kursk, was the sister of Nikolai Polevoy and Ksenofont Polevoy. Avdeyeva was known for her books on homemaking and her collections of Russian folk tales. In 1837, she published her Notes and Remarks about Siberia. She died in Derpt, now Tartu, Estonia.17

Countess Antonina Dmitrievna Bludova (25 April 1813–9 April 1891), born in Stockholm, early met Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, and other leading writers. Her Saint Petersburg salon was a vital link between the imperial court and Slavophile circles; but after her father’s death in 1864, Bludova left the capital and devoted herself to Christian philanthropy. Her memoirs were published in 1889.18

Anna Petrovna Bunina (18 January 1774–16 December 1829), born in the village of Urusovo, lost her mother in childbirth and received a rudimentary education. In 1802, Bunina moved to Saint Petersburg and devoted herself to writing. In 1807–1810, she was part of Gavrila Derzhavin’s and Alexander Shishkov’s literary circle; Shishkov became a mentor. The imperial family awarded her pensions in 1809, 1810, and 1813. Burina published her first work in 1809: The Inexperienced Muse, with a second volume in 1812. In 1811, she was made an honorary member of the Lovers of the Russian Word. Burina traveled to Britain in 1815–1817 for breast cancer treatment, without success. Her collected works appeared in 1819; she left the capital in 1824 due to continuing illness, dying in 1829.19

Dorothea “Dolly” de Ficquelmont, née Countess Dorothea von Tiesenhausen (14 October 1804–10 April 1863), born in Saint Petersburg, was the granddaughter of General Prince Kutuzov. From 1815–1821, Ficquelmont lived in Reval (now Tallinn) and Florence. In 1821, she married Count Charles-Louis de Ficquelmont, who was then appointed Austrian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in Naples. In 1829, Charles-Louis was appointed Austrian Ambassador to Russia; Ficquelmont opened a salon, featuring Turgenev, Vyazemsky, and Alexander Pushkin. The Ficquelmonts left for Vienna in 1839. In 1848, Charles-Louis, Minister-President of the Habsburg Empire, was accused of supporting Russia; Ficquelmont in Venice was twice arrested. Her French diary appeared in 1950, while her many letters remain unpublished.20

Aleksandra Ishimova (6 January 1805–16 June 1881), born in Kostroma, studied in private boarding schools in Saint Petersburg until a scandal involving her father made the family relocate to the northern provinces. Tsar Alexander I pardoned her father in 1825 and they returned to the capital. Ishimova there opened a small school, meeting Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky, and Pushkin. Ishimova received Pushkin’s final letter, written the day of his duel. She published two monthly journals for young ladies: Little Star, 1842–1863, and Rays of Light, 1850–1860. Her 1841 book History of Russia in Stories for Children received the Demidov Prize in 1852. Ishimova also translated and printed several narratives for children, focused on religious and moral education.21

Nadezhda Dmitryevna Khvoshchinskaya [or V. Krestovsky] (20 May 1821?–8 June 1889) was born in Ryazan, where her father was accused of embezzlement; it took him ten years to clear his name, while the family sank into poverty. Khvoshchinskaya was educated at home by private tutors. She published her first poems in 1842, writing over a hundred poems in her lifetime, mostly unpublished. Her first novel, Anna Mikhailovna appeared in 1850 in Notes of the Fatherland, using her pen name. Several further novels and stories followed, including The Boarding School Girl, 1861, and Ursa Major, 1871. Khvoshchinskaya also translated several of George Sand’s novels. She spent most of her life in Ryazan, moving to Saint Petersburg after her mother’s death in 1884.22

Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Kniazhnina (1746–6 June 1797), born in Saint Petersburg, married Yakov Knyazhnin in 1770. Kniazhnina hosted an important salon, published poetry in Russian journals, and was also the first known Russian woman to write an elegy. Ivan Krylov wrote a parody about the couple in 1787, Prokazniki [The Troublemakers].23

Yevdokiya Petrovna Rostopchina (23 December 1811–3 December 1858), born in Moscow, lost her mother at six. She learned German, French, Italian, and English. Her friend Vyazemsky published her first poem, “Talisman,” in his almanac in 1831; in 1833, she married Count Andrey Fedorovich Rostopchin. The family moved in 1836 to Saint Petersburg; Lermontov, Pushkin, Zhukovsky supported her work; her salon featured Vyazemsky, Gogol, and others. Rostopchina wrote poetry, prose, and comedy. During her trip abroad in 1845, she wrote the poem “Forced Marriage,” about Russia’s occupation of Poland. The furious tsar banned her from the capital. She continued to write poems, plays, and translations, living in Moscow until the tsar’s death.24

Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova, née Rosset (6 March 1809–7 June 1882), born in Odessa, lost her father in 1814 to the plague. In 1826, she became lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress, then the Empress after 1828. She also shone in the Karamzin salon, counting Pushkin, Vyazemsky, and Zhukovsky as admirers. In 1832, she married Nikolai Mikhailovich Smirnov, traveling in Europe in 1833–1837 for her health, then again in 1842–1844, when she spent time with Gogol. After 1845 and an interval in Kaluga, the couple moved between Saint Petersburg and Europe, notably Paris where Smirnova visited Mickiewicz. She died there, leaving both actual memoirs and ‘posthumous notes’ which appear to have been largely fabricated by her daughter.25

Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, née Countess Vorontsova (28 March 1743–15 January 1810), learned Russian, French, Italian, and German, studying mathematics at university and becoming a maid-of-honor to the tsarina in her teens. At court, she grew close to Grand Duchess Yekaterina Alexeyevna [Catherine]. In 1759, she married Prince Mikhail Dashkov. When Peter became tsar in 1762, Catherine led a coup d’État. In 1764, Dashkov died; Dashkova left for Europe from 1768–1782. In France, she became friends with Diderot, Voltaire, and Benjamin Franklin. Back in Russia, Catherine appointed Dashkova director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first woman in the world to lead a national academy. She edited a six-volume Russian dictionary and a monthly magazine, writing at least two novels and her memoirs, published in French in 1804. She also composed music.26

Maria Semyonovna Zhukova (1805–26 April 1855), born in Arzamas, spent her childhood in the provinces. She married a local landowner at seventeen or eighteen. Zhukova moved to Saint Petersburg around 1830, writing to support herself and pay her husband’s gambling debts. Her first story appeared in 1837, her first real success with the story collection Evenings on the Karpovka in 1838–1839. Zhukova published frequently, both novels and travel accounts. Tales followed in 1840, and Sketches of Southern France and Nice in 1844.27

Ukraine (1 writer)

Hanna Barvinok

Лихо не без добра (1857)

Як ішла я заміж, дак свого жениха й не бачила. Я осталась п›яти год од матері, да ще було в мене дві сестри да брат жонатий; у його ми й жили. Невістка нами орудувала. Нікого ми не знали, нікуди не ходили. Хто ходить, тому як у себе в оселі, а я було боюсь і за тин вийти: неволя була; тільки по воду до колодязя ходила.

От один раз, якось так случилось, у сусідстві весілля було. Я й пішла. Як біжить невістчин хлопець:—Іди додому!

Я зараз і йду. Звісно, не рідна мати кличе. Ідемо, аж бачу: недалеко від хати ходить шкапа. Я питаю хлопця:—Чия то шкапа? Де вона взялася?

Бо до нас ніхто ніколи не ходив, таких злючих собак держала невістка, і ми нікого не проводили, то й людей не бачили.

—А то,—каже,—хтось до нас приїхав.

Прийшли в хату, аж дивлюсь—такого багато людей! Ну, сказано —багато. Да все локшу кришять. Аж тут невістка мені назустріч:—Одягайся: підеш вінчатись.

Як мені сказано одягайся, так я й отетеріла й отерпла: ходю по хаті, нічого перед собою не бачу: завертілось—завертілось у голові... Я нічого не знаю. Ну, і на весілля прохала—як дерев›яна була. Сказано —не знаю.28

A Blessing in Disguise

I met my fiancé only at the wedding. I was five years old when my mother passed away; I had two sisters and a married brother; we lived in his house. Our sister-in-law ordered us around. We didn’t know anyone, we didn’t go anywhere. In your home, you do whatever you like, but I was scared to step even beyond the fence: It was my bondage; I would only go to the well to get some water.

Once, our neighbors had a wedding. So, I went. And then my sister-in-law’s boy ran up:—Go home!

I went right away, of course. You know, it is not your mother who sends for you. We were walking, and then I saw an old horse near the house. I asked the boy:—Whose horse is that? Where did it come from?

No one ever visited us, our sister-in-law kept vicious dogs. And we didn’t invite anyone, so we didn’t see people.

—We’ve got some guests—he said.

We entered the house, and I saw a lot of people! Yes, many people. They were talking and cooking. Then my sister-in-law came up to me and said:—Get dressed: you are going to get married.

As I was told “Get dressed,” I became dazed and numb. I was walking around the house and I couldn’t see anything in front of me: my head was spinning– everything was spinning around me. I don’t know anything. Well, I invited everyone to the wedding—I was numb. I told you—I don’t know.29

Hanna Barvinok was writing by the 1840s; this story is dated 1857, but finding Barvinok proved complicated, and the Harvard library copy here cited begins with this tale. I am told that Barvinok is still read in Ukrainian schools, and this writing is popular, true to its designation—narodny—in this modern L’viv edition. As in the Czech and Hungarian extracts from Němcová and Karacs, this is a simple story, describing a young woman’s imprisonment in her brother’s house, her subjection to her sister-in-law, and her eventual freedom through marriage, reflecting the title’s premise that there is no evil without good. Class markers here are infrequent but present: the first-person narrator goes to the well for water, no servant performs that task. The tone in this dialogue-heavy extract is immediate and chatty; Barvinok has a gift for storytelling, with a focus on plot and dialogue in the place of description and character development. One thinks of the French neoclassical maxim, “Parler c’est agir,” to speak is to act. Were it not for the first-person narration, this might be one of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales: the scene is deftly set in the narrow space that a three-page short story occupies.

Beyond the class setting, this extract also tells us more than a little about the situation of women in mid-nineteenth-century Ukraine, at least of women who draw their own water. The narrator and protagonist, on her mother’s disappearance, is not free to act; she is imprisoned in her married brother’s house and subject to his wife’s caprices: “We didn’t know anyone, we didn’t go anywhere.” This is a society in which unmarried women answer to their male family members; freedom, per the title, comes with marriage, and that is not so very different from the imprisonment described by the rather wealthier Elisavet Moutzan-Martinengou on contemporary Zakynthos, as class distinctions bow to the dead hand of patriarchy. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that the liberating marriage here is an arranged one: “I met my fiancé only at the wedding,” writes Barvinok. The narrator is in no way master of her fate; she is traded from one household to another much as a piece of furniture might be.

Is Romanticism to be found in this short tale of marriage and liberation? We have argued that a defining characteristic of women’s writing in the age is empathy for the oppressed, and that certainly seems to be the case here. We are squarely in the shoes of the protagonist, a person endowed with sentience if not free will, who seems relatively resigned to her lot and yet finds meaning in the liberation an arranged marriage grants her. If Barvinok found this situation appalling, she does not shout it from the rooftops, she instead chooses to let us note the details—the vicious dogs that keep visitors away—and draw our own conclusions. There is tact in this approach, and even kindness. So, from a populist or folk tale perspective, as from a woman’s perspective, the story has typical Romantic elements. But further, the very choice of idiom is itself a Romantic manifesto: Ukraine was occupied in 1857, but Barvinok elects not to write in the language of the occupier. She writes in Ukrainian, indeed in dialectal Ukrainian. This appeal to the living speech of the nation—a national or narodny discourse—is fundamental to the history of Romanticism, from the ballad to the fairy tale to the dictionary, and from the 1760s—Bishop Percy in England—to at least the 1850s—Asbjørnsen and Moe in Norway, collectors of fairy tales. It is a revolutionary act, and part of a tradition stretching, like the present volume, from St Petersburg to Lima. Barvinok’s choice of language is, in short, a quintessentially Romantic decision. She is in good company, and it is entirely fitting that she should be read today by the schoolchildren of Ukraine.

Oleksandra Mikhailovna Bilozerska-Kulish [or Hanna Barvinok] (5 May 1828–6 July 1911), born into a literary family in the Chernigov Governorate (Ukraine), married Panteleimon Kulish in 1847. The couple traveled to Warsaw, where Panteleimon was arrested, sent to Saint Petersburg, and tried for writing The Tale of the Ukrainian People. Barvinok suffered a miscarriage and became unable to have children. From 1854, the couple lived in Saint Petersburg, returning to Motronivka in 1883. When Panteleimon died, Barvinok published his writings. She wrote more than thirty stories, beginning in the 1840s; her first work was The Jewish Serf. She began publishing in 1858: House Disaster, 1861, Women’s Poverty and Victory, 1887, Father’s Mistake, 1902. Barvinok’s works appeared in Khata, First Wreath, Osnova, Pravda, and elsewhere, her complete works in 2002.30

Estonia (0 writers)

I have identified zero Estonian women authors in this period. Further research clearly remains to be done.

  1. 1 Francis Ley, Madame de Krüdener et son temps, 1764–1824 (Paris: Plon, 1961).

  2. 2 Mme la Comtesse de Choiseul-Gouffier, née Comtesse de Tisenhaus, Réminiscences sur l’empereur Alexandre Ier et sur l’empereur Napoléon Ier (Besançon: Bonvalot, 1862).

  3. 3 In Klementyna Tańska, Dziennik Franciszki Krasińskiej w Ostatnich Latach Panowiana Augusta III Pisany, ed. Ida Kotowa (Kraków: W.L. Anczyca i Spółki, 1929), pp. 3–4.

  4. 4 The Journal of Countess Françoise Krasinska Great Grandmother of Victor Emmanuel, tr. Kasimir Dziekonska, 7th edition (Chicago, A.C. McClurg & Co., 1899), pp. 7–8. Text in square brackets is absent in the published translation.

  5. 5 Gabriela Pauszer-Klonowska, Pani na Puławach [Lady in Puławy] (Warsaw: Inicjal, 2010).

  6. 6 Aaron I. Cohen. International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, 2nd edition, 2 vols (New York: Books & Music, 1987).

  7. 7 Wirydianna Fiszerowa. Dzieje moje własne [My Own Story] (Warsaw: Świat Książki, 1998).

  8. 8 Joanna E. Dąbrowska: Klementyna (Białystok: Trans Humana Wydawnictwo Uniwersyteckie, 2008).

  9. 9 Bibliografia Literatury Polskiej—Nowy Korbut, 12 vols (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1967).

  10. 10 Ibid.

  11. 11 Jakuboszczak Agnieszka, Sarmacka dama Barbara Sanguszkowa (1718–1791) i jej salon towarzyski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2008).

  12. 12 Barbara Winklowa, Narcyza Żmichowska i Wanda Żeleńska (Kraków: Literackie, 2004).

  13. 13 Ростопчина, Е.П. Талисман (Москва: Московский рабочий, 1987) [Rostopchina, E.P., Talisman (Moscow, Moskovskiy rabochiy, 1987)], pp. 109–111. See also: https://litrika.ru/evdokiya-rastopchina-nasilnyj-brak/#sbirajtes-slugi-i.a1

  14. 14 Translation reviewed by Margarita Madanova Isbell.

  15. 15 Marina Ledkovsky, Charlotte Rosenthal, and Mary Fleming Zirin. Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).

  16. 16 Marina Ledkovsky et al. Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (1994).

  17. 17 A.A. Polovtsov, Русский биографический словарь [Russian Biographical Dictionary], 25 vols (St Petersburg: Imperial Russian Historical Society, 1896–1918).

  18. 18 Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона [Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary], 86 volumes (St. Petersburg and Leipzig: Brockhaus and Efron, 1890–1907).

  19. 19 Smith, Bonnie, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  20. 20 Dolly Ficquelmont, Дневник 1829–1837. Весь пушкинский Петербург [Diary 1829–1837. All Pushkin’s Petersburg] (Moscow: Minuvshee, 2009).

  21. 21 Andrew Kahn, The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Marina Ledkovsky et al. Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).

  22. 22 Jehanne M. Gheith, Finding the Middle Ground: Krestovskii, Tur, and the Power of Ambivalence in Nineteenth-Century Russian Women’s Prose (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004).

  23. 23 Marina Ledkovsky et al., Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (1994).

  24. 24 Diana Greene, Reinventing Romantic Poetry: Russian Women Poets of the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004).

  25. 25 A.O. Smirnova-Rosset, Воспоминания, письма [Memories, Letters] (Moscow: Pravda, 1990).

  26. 26 A. Woronzoff-Dashkoff, Dashkova: A Life of Influence and Exile (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2008).

  27. 27 Victor Terras, A History of Russian Literature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).

  28. 28 Hanna Barvinok, Твори у двох томах [Works in two volumes] (Lʹviv: BaK, 2011), I p. 20.

  29. 29 Translation reviewed by Nataliya Shpylova–Saeed.

  30. 30 Kubijovyč, Volodymyr, and Arkadii Zhukovsky, eds. Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984–1988).

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