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Nancy Isenberg




Publishing History of Justine Wynne

Abstract

This paper is about some of the difficulties I have encountered in trying to reconstruct the publishing history of Justine Wynne’s works and the extent of their circulation in Europe and beyond. These include:

  • the multiple and at times covert ways she was identified in her publications (for example, as ‘J.W.C.D.R.’, ‘J.W. C-t-ss of R-s-g’, or ‘Mme la comtesse Douairière des Ursins et Rosenberg’),
  • the multiple and at time erroneous ways she is identified in library catalogues,
  • the names by which she is identified in the work of scholars.

But more importantly, in direct relation to the purpose of this COST Action, I have recently become aware of a substantial number of instances in which her essays and stories were republished (and in at least one instance under a different title) in magazines, book collections and as single volumes (in England, Ireland, the United States, Italy, and Austria) with no mention of the author.

I would like to discuss some of the questions this situation raises about how we can evaluate the cultural influence of the women writers we are studying. I would also like to discuss some of the strategies I’ve been using to track down publications of Wynne’s works, the role (both positive and negative) various electronic databases have been playing in my research, and what I see as directions and cooperative activities we might want to consider in our networking.






AsK, September 2012




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