The Education of Fanny Lewald

Book excerpt: The Education of Fanny Lewald is the autobiography of the most popular and prolific German woman writer of her period (1811-1889). The author of more than fifty books of fiction, travel memoirs, and articles about current events, Lewald was a friend or acquaintance of many of the prominent intellectual, artistic, and political figures of nineteenth-century Europe. Her autobiography is clearly and engagingly written. We see her developing from the bright, oldest child of a middle-class Jewish family in East Prussia into a successful writer and financially independent woman. And we see her struggles with a patriarchal society along the way.