Confessions of a poisoner, written by herself
By: translated and introduced by Raleigh Whitinger and Diana Spokiene.
Contributors: Whitinger, Raleigh, 1944-; Spokiene, Diana.
Series: Texts and translations -- 27
Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng; ger
Number of pages: 196
ISBN-13: 9781603290654
Subjects: Autobiographical fiction, German -- Translations into English; Epistolary fiction, German -- Translations into English; Women -- Germany -- Fiction; Berlin (Germany) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Genres: Translations into English; Fiction
Work titles: Bekenntnisse einer giftmischerin, von ihr selbst geschrieben.
Description: "An Berlin, 1803, readers rushed to their bookstores and libraries to learn more about Countess Charlotte Ursinus, who had murdered several people with poison and was now in prison. To their surprise, Confessions of a Poisoner, Written by Herself turned out to be not an account by this serial killer but a novel, its author anonymous and its pages filled with promiscuous sex, sharp social criticism, and dark humor." "In their introduction to the translation, Raleigh Whitinger and Diana Spokiene show how Confessions was written in response to a literary tradition (Richardson, Rousseau, Goethe) and how, in its questioning of the submissive images and roles of women, it anticipates feminist fiction of a century later. Whitinger and Spokiene also review the critical arguments about whether the author was a man or a woman."--Jacket.