Jane Austen read in 19th-century Netherlands?
The question as to whether Jane Austen was or was not being read in the Netherlands was recently addressed in one of the contributions to the volume The Reception of Jane Austen in Europe, edited by Anthony Mandal and Brian Southam (2007). It seems to me, however, that this question was only partially answered. In a sense, such incompleteness is characteristic of any research on the reception of literary works, and should, in general, not be considered a major obstacle to our appreciation of such efforts. Nevertheless, the book, and in particular the article by Maximiliaan van Woudenberg entitled "Going Dutch: The Reception of Jane Austen in the Low Countries", gives rise to certain observations about the particular problems which emerge in research concerning the reception of female authors.
The article claims a limited Austen-presence also in the Netherlands. The author distinguishes three periods: "neglect (1815-1922), appreciation (1922-80) and popularity (1980 onwards)" (75). In fact he is focusing on the latter two – after stating that probably "a limited readership for Austen in French did exist in the Netherlands" during the 19th century. As the introduction to Jane Austen in Europe suggests, the outcome of this first large overview should be treated as provisional and in fact as an incentive to look more closely into Austen’s destiny in the Netherlands (as well as abroad): the book "presents a point of departure for future and more extended evaluations of the reception of Jane Austen in Europe" (11).
One question to dwell on, for instance, is the role of gender: if Austen was not translated, who of her "sister authors" was? And how did Dutch readers comment on the works of these women? Another concerns the issue as to whether truly all possible sources of information have been considered. Anyway, a better understanding of the context of Austen's "non-reception" could be gained.
Here, I first provide a "female" context to Austen’s absence in the Netherlands, by showing that quite a lot of her female colleagues did occupy a position in the Dutch literary field. Next, I shall argue that there is more to be said about Austen’s reception in the Low Countries. The database of the NEWW project has provided some new data indeed.
Female context
- Translations
While no works by Jane Austen were translated into Dutch during the 19th century, works by contemporary novelists were (I focus globally on the first three decades of the 19th century):
| Bennett, Agnes Maria: | 2 (1789-1816) | ||
| Burney, Fanny: | 3 (1780-1790) | ||
| Burney, Sarah Harriet: | 2 (1816-20) | ||
| Edgeworth, Maria: | 7 (1810-20) | ||
| Hays, Mary: | no translations | ||
| Hofland, Barbara: | 3 (1819-29) | ||
| Kelty, Mary Ann: | no translations | ||
| More, Hannah: | 12 (1801-26) | ||
| Opie, Amelia: | 3 (1809-19) | ||
| Owenson, Sydney: | 8 (1812-22) |
(all figures according to present state of the database and present knowledge).
This is of course no more than a point of departure for further comparative analysis. In order to further document these Dutch preferences, it is worthwhile, first, to compare to translations into other languages. Numbers of translations into French, for instance, are clearly larger. These figures disclose some striking information: they confirm not only the Dutch absence vs. French presence of Jane Austen, but also call attention to the much greater French enthusiasm for gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe and her epigone Regina Maria Roche, as opposed to Dutch preference for the "evangelical" writer Hannah More, principal representative of "Moral-Domestic fiction" of the time - virtually absent in France.
- Periodical press
Second, one can turn to the periodical press for explicit comments on the choices made by translators and publishers. One finds there that the demand – at least among critics – was for moral lessons: "the excellent morality of Opie’s New Tales makes us recommend this work wholeheartedly", and the "high moral import" of her work is regarded as "positively improving human happiness". The critics were most satisfied when, as in Elisabeth Sandham’s Twin Sisters, moral lessons were combined with religious ones. This explains the vast enthusiasm for Hannah More. The wish is expressed that her work may be read "to teach people self-knowledge and make them recur from pride and self-esteem, in order to walk meekly with God while practising true Christianity". Barbara Hofland’s novels were much praised for the same reason: "We have here a well-made and highly instructive story, which strongly evokes our sense of, and trust in, the Fatherly guidance of divine Providence and does so in a noble and truly religious fashion".
These women were considered to be addressing the female part of the reading public in particular. Critics in fact sketched a woman’s circle or subsystem where these works were to play a role in the education of girls. Therefore, the reviewer of Jane West’s The Advantages of Education, or the History of Maria Williams "particularly recommended it to our Dutch Mothers, wishing to draw their attention to the example of the amiable Miss Williams, who was raised by a wise mother to possess many silent and graceful qualities of soul and virtues". Amelia Opie’s "capable writer’s hand" was extolled as "the hand of your Friend, my dear young Lady!".
According to the reviewers, the importance of these novels to the assumed – and possibly really existing – female readership was in the warnings they provided. Opie’s novel, for example, was thought to show their young female readers "the abominable consequences of a single faux pas, so that they may be warned against frivolity and overconfidence". As we know, this image of the woman as a warner of young girls is perfectly mocked by Jane Austen herself, which makes quite understandable her absence in the Dutch literary field.
New data
Information stocked recently into the database WomenWriters shows, however, that Jane Austen’s "absence" in the 19th-century Netherlands was not complete. A (short) list of reception data illustrates in particular the necessity of considering the Dutch reception of an English author in its European context: an 1817 Dutch comment on Emma is in fact a translation from the German, which was probably itself a reflection of Walter Scott’s famous review of the novel in the Quarterly Review of March 1816.
Austen’s relative "non-acceptance" in the Dutch press can also be counter-balanced by considering the opinions of "ordinary readers", male and female. Some of them will have asked for her novels in Leiden, where Van der Hoek’s library catalogue mentions a copy of "Sense and Sensibility" acquired in 1865.
There is another possibility for counter-balancing, by focusing - in the case of female authors - on female readers. In a late 19th-century feminist journal, an announcement of Lady Susan was found, headed by the words: "A New Novel by Miss Austen" and naming her "this well-known authoress" - in particular with women? The "Ladies’ Reading Museum" in The Hague also bought a copy of Pride and Prejudice in 1896.
Clearly many questions remain to be answered, and the recent findings can be dismissed for not being really "massive". Nevertheless, it is important to recognize the perspicacity of those 19th-century readers who were early appreciators, and also to note that the present database content certainly does not cover the whole of the literary field, book trade and women’s press (but is based on a selection of titles and sample years). These reception traces are again to be seen as incentives….
The subject is discussed more extensively in my contribution "Was Jane Austen read in the 19th-century Netherlands?", in: Tom Toremans et al. (eds.), Cultural Crossings. Exploring the Nineteenth-Century Distribution of English Literatures in the Low Countries. Leuven University Press, 2008 (in press).
Suzan van Dijk, October 2008
- Note that informations contained in the database WomenWriters have been derived from contemporary sources. They may contain errors. Also important: when arriving in the database WomenWriters, your status is: "not logged on", which means that you have only partial view. For complete view and participation in the project, take contact.
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