Hermine Williams

Therese Von Jakob Robinson: a Biographical Portrait Hermine Williams

Therese von Jakob Robinson (1797?1870), a native of Halle, Germany, has been the subject of numerous studies and several international conferences that have focused almost exclusively on her poetical translations of Serbian folk-song texts, which were published in a two-volume edition in 1826. Other aspects of her literary career, namely those related to her work as a novelist and essayist, have been undertaken by those seeking to define how the immigrant experience of German-American women affected their writings. Biographical studies, however, have been limited because of a paucity of primary materials, especially those associated with the thirty years Therese spent in America as the wife of Edward Robinson. The present biography-the first in the English language to appear in almost one hundred years-relies heavily on original documents provided the author by the descendants of Therese and Edward Robinson. With this newly acquired material, the author has been able to draw a more expansive portrait of a remarkable female writer, whose career forged a significant cultural bridge between Germany and America in the nineteenth century.