HAVING DISCUSSED HALF of the novels, my study now turns to the fourth exemplary novel in the Age of Emotion: Agnes von Lilien (Agnes of the Lilies), which was written by Caroline von Wolzogen. However, before engaging in the canon-conferring critical reading of this work, a larger issue—one that has long troubled revisioning approaches to women's literature—arises with an urgency that can no longer be deferred. That issue is anonymous publication. When this chapter's novel was first published in 1796, it appeared anonymously, as did the prior novels in this study. Both the identity of its author, Caroline von Wolzogen, and her female gender were hidden from contemporary readers. In that it was written by an author without a name, it consequently entered the public sphere like an illegitimate child, that is, like a human being whose bio-logical progenitors did not legally acknowledge its birth or their relationship. There are interesting parallels between anonymous publication and so-called illegitimate children. Both are fraught with questions of self-identity and changes in social status and both are frequently accompanied by discourses of secrecy, disowning, discovery, revealing, and, perhaps, acknowledging. Though a publication may be anonymous and a child may be called illegitimate, both have human creators. Not knowing who the creators are creates problems for both. The status of the unacknowledged parent, much like that of the hidden author, may have a significant impact on the child's (or the novel’s) reception: a parent may, for example, be the absent biological father of a child, or a foster father deeply engaged in the development of his charge. Unfortunately, if the parent/author was a young, unmarried woman around 1800, the child suffered legal disadvantages and social ostracization even if the parent acknowledged responsibility.

Here is where books are only figuratively like children, especially as they are regularly conceived by a single person. While many writers around 1800 were apt to publish their fiction without putting their names in the front matter and while this practice impacted the fiction's reception, it plays out differently than with a child.