Abstract: Sophie von La Roche exemplifies the gendered exclusion of eighteenth-century female authors from the German literary canon. Her first novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), has yet to be fully recognized for its generic innovations in the German epistolary genre and for its direct influence on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774). A close side-by-side reading of both novels reveals several similarities that set the German epistolary novel apart from the English and French examples. By taking into account the mutual mentorship and collaboration between La Roche and Goethe in the years leading up to the publication of Werther, La Roche's role in the development of the genre becomes evident. The value of recentering La Roche's Sternheim in this manner lies in the ability to better identify the mechanisms that perpetuate the gendered exclusion of authors like La Roche from the German literary tradition, making visible a path to a more inclusive literary canon.

Keywords: Gendered authorship, epistolary novel, dilettantism, exclusion, literary canon, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, Die Leiden des jungen Werther

SOPHIE VON LA ROCHE's epistolary novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim, 1771) has yet to be fully recognized for its significant contribution to the development of the epistolary novel in Germany. By reading La Roche's Sternheim alongside Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's breakthrough novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774), her role in shaping the novel genre becomes evident. I n this comparative study, I build on previous scholarly work that recognizes the direct influence of La Roche's text on the development of the modern novel generally and the genesis of Werther specifically.

I center La Roche as the crucial authorial link that brings the developing epistolary novel, popularized in England by Samuel Richardson and in France by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to Germany. Below, I outline the similarities between the two epistolary novels in form and content, followed by an analysis of the personal relationship between La Roche and Goethe. S pecifically, a close reading of their correspondence after the publication of Sternheim and leading up to Goethe's rise to fame with the success of Werther offers context to the shared features of the novel.