As the second year of TTT dawns (and now that our database is undergoing renovation), the moment for self-reflection seems to have arrived. So let me begin at the beginning: what do I do at TTT? As a research assistant on the Scottish branch, my work has been divided between two databases: WomenWriters and the “Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico Español” (Collective Catalogue of Spanish Bibliographical Heritage). The latter is an online repository of holdings at Spanish libraries; and there, I looked for translations of 1) works written by women and 2) works translated by women. The time period? As those faithful to this blog already know, these have been the three time windows relevant to our project: 1790-1820, 1850-1870 and 1890-1914. Following a comparison between the two databases, I entered information about those authors, works and/or translations not yet on WomenWriters to the database.

What did I discover, you might wonder? Let me illustrate my findings with one example: women writers from the religious professions. The Spanish Saint Teresa de Jesús (1515-1582), of course, is the first one to come to mind; and of her works, I have found numerous editions, re-editions, selections, compilations and translations (also editions, selections, etc, of the translations!) Another popular Saint Thérèse, in this case new to WomenWriters, is Thérèse de Lisieux (1873-1897)—also known as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. At the age of 15, De Lisieux accompanied her father to Rome with one idea in mind: asking for the Pope’s permission to enter the Discalded Carmelite Congregation despite her tender age. As De Lisieux herself, many of the nun-writers I found suffered an early death, which thwarted their literary production: De Lisieux perished at 24 from consumption; Élizabeth de la Trinité, another French Discalced Carmelite and mystic, was a victim of Addison’s disease at 26.

In the case of mystics especially, the whole notion of authorship is utterly problematic. The writings of Élizabeth de la Trinité were not published until years after her death, having been collected by Reginald Garriou-Lagrange O.C. De Lisieux’s well-known autobiography The Story of a Soul was posthumously published (1898), following some heavily editing by the Carmelite prioresses. An even more extreme case is that of German mystic Anne-Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824): Emmerich did not write a single word from her Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1834) and Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1852). She went into trance, and the celebrated poet Clemens Brentano transcribed her reflections—impossible to know how accurately! To make matters more complicated, Brentano died while putting together Emmerich’s second volume, so the task had to be completed by his wife.

This long chain of authors, transcribers and editors problematises the authorship of De Lisieux’s, De la Trinité’s and Emmerich’s works. It certainly complicates my task of adding new authors and their works to the database—who was truly responsible for the venerated passages from Story of a Soul? How much of The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary is Emmerich’s, how much Brentano’s and how much his wife’s? A male “collaborator” also adds to our difficulties—how are we to draw reasonable conclusions about female writers across Europe? There is no answer to who wrote what, and we, most likely, will never know. Perhaps these works are after all better seen as collaborative writing, rather than single-authored volumes. So as I add part of these composition stories to WomenWriters under “provisional notes,” I wonder: isn’t this actually what we are looking for? Isn’t this sort of collaboration between female authors—alright, also male sometimes—the very aim of our HERA Project?

For more information on the authors cited:

Saint Teresa de Jesús: http://neww.huygens.knaw.nl/authors/show/1188

Thérèse de Lisieux: http://neww.huygens.knaw.nl/authors/show/6413

Élizabeth de la Trinité/Elizabeth of Trinity: http://neww.huygens.knaw.nl/authors/show/6470

Anne-Catherine Emmerich: http://neww.huygens.knaw.nl/authors/show/5668