Colleagues may be interested in the new publication described below.
David Midgley
--
Dr D.R. Midgley
Reader in German Literature and Culture
St John's College
Cambridge CB2 1TP
Tel. ++1223 338779
The End and the Beginning - The Book of My Life", by Hermynia Zur Mühlen,
translated with an Introduction and Comments by Lionel Gossman.
"The End and the Beginning" is a lively personal memoir of a vanished
world and of a rebellious, high-spirited young woman's struggle to achieve
independence, first published in Germany in 1929.
Born in 1883 into an aristocratic family of the old Austro-Hungarian
Empire, Hermynia Zur Mühlen spent much of her childhood traveling in
Europe and North Africa with her diplomat father. After five years on her
German husband's estate in czarist Russia she broke with both her family
and her husband and set out on a precarious career as a professional
writer committed to socialism. Besides translating many contemporary
authors into German, she herself published an impressive number of
politically engaged novels, detective stories, short stories, and
children's fairy tales. Because of her outspoken opposition to National
Socialism, she had to flee Austria in 1938 and seek refuge in England,
where she died, virtually penniless, in 1951.
This revised and corrected translation of Zur Mühlen's memoir - with
extensive notes and an essay on the author by Lionel Gossman - will appeal
especially to readers interested in women's history, the Central European
aristocratic world that came to an end with the First World War, and the
culture and politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A free Online Supplement contains additional original material, including
a selection of newly translated stories by Hermynia Zur Mühlen,
biographical essays by Lionel Gossman and a portfolio of images.
(http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/76)
The book is available in paperback (£13.95), hardback (£22.95) and digital
pdf (£4.95). It is also available online for free, in its entirety. Please
use the following the link:
http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/65
And if you would like to recommend the book to your library please use
this link: http://www.openbookpublishers.com/emaillibrary.php?xProd=65
Open Book Publishers is a non-profit academic publisher, based in
Cambridge and London (UK) with the express aim to disseminate scholarship
as widely as possible. All our titles are accessible online for free as
well a purchasable in traditional forms.
|