Women authors classified per country
In the lists generated up to now Dutch authors are over-represented. This has to do with the fact that earlier phases of this collaboration project focused on the reception of women's writing in the Netherlands: while looking for traces of foreign authors finding Dutch readers, we found not only the names (or pseudonyms) and works of many non-Dutch authors, but also an astonishing number of Dutch women, who commented, translated, adapted the foreign texts. Instead of the average dozen women that appear in current Dutch literary historiography (concerning the periods before 1900), we found more than 700 Dutch names (19th century: 400; 18th: 175; 17th: 100; earlier: 25). This sounds incredible; analyses of the data and detailed study of the reception documents themselves will have to explain our findings and may account for the discrepancy between the numbers of lost and surviving authors. The same phenomenon will, no doubt, be found for authors writing in other languages.
For the other countries, the numbers of authors mentioned in the database WomenWriters are - for the moment - much smaller. Entry of data has not taken place in a systematic way: it depended on the writers' being received and read in the Netherlands and on individual interest of NEWW collaborators or occasional information being found by chance. In a next phase of the collaborative research much work is to be done here. In particular there will remain a need of continuous checking: knowing for instance that often women changed names, one can imagine that there are possibly several records presenting one and the same woman. Another complication is in the fact that several women lived and published in different countries: they have been counted 2 or 3 times.
Anyway, for the moment (May 2010) these are the numbers per country, and the year of birth of the "first" of the writers:
- 807 Dutch authors, the first being born 1200
- 670 French authors, from 400
- 390 English authors, from 1373
- 245 authors active in Germany, from 600
- 94 authors active in the United States, from 1612
- 99 authors active in Italy, from 1314
- 77 authors active in Sweden, from 1303
- 90 authors active in Belgium (before 1830: Southern Netherlands), from 1177
- 43 authors active in Russia, from 1714
- 31 authors active in Denmark, from 1610
- 24 authors active in Ireland, from 1613
- 25 authors active in Norway, from 1780
- 22 authors active in Switzerland, from 1694
- 60 authors active in Spain, from 1504
- 15 authors active in Austria, from 1633
- 10 authors active in Greece, from the 5th century before Christ
- 9 authors active in Slovenia, from 1818
- 20 authors active in Hungary, from 1779
- 9 authors active in Czechia, from 1687
- 21 authors active in Portugal, from 1458
- 8 authors active in Poland, from 1700
- 7 authors active in Turkey, from 1725
- 4 authors active in Bulgaria, from 1835
- 5 authors active in Scotland, from 1755
- 4 authors active in colonies of European countries, from 1856
- 7 authors active in Rumania, from 1828
- 13 authors active in Finland, from 1807
- 2 authors active in Canada, from 1820
- 2 authors active in Croatia, from 1812
- 2 authors active in Mexico, from 1648
- 2 authors active in Argentina, from beginning of 19th century
- 16 authors active in Serbia, from 1349
- 2 authors active in Egypt, from 1840
- 1 author active in Slovakia, from 1855.
These figures will have to be not only completed, but also compared from one country to another, to those concerning male literary production, and then further understood by going into the records presenting these women's dialogues with their publics. They serve as starting points for further research and analysis.
Suzan van Dijk, 13 May 2010
- The writing side > Grouped per country