The Human Family

The first complete translation of a cycle of ten novellas by a leading German woman writer of the nineteenth century

A complete translation of the cycle of ten novellas that Lou Andreas-Salome wrote between 1895 and 1898. This collection contributes to the rediscovery of Andreas-Salome's significance as a thinker and writer, above all with regard to her literary contribution to modern feminism and the principles of women's emancipation.The Human Family is the first complete translation of the cycle of ten novellas that Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937) wrote between 1895 and 1898. This collection contributes to the rediscovery of Andreas-Salomé’s significance as a thinker and writer, above all with regard to her literary contribution to modern feminism and the principles of women’s emancipation. Born in St. Petersburg to a German diplomat and his wife, Andreas-Salomé has always been a figure of interest because of her close relationships to influential thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud. Only since the mid-1980s, however, have her prose fiction and theoretical writings been reconsidered as important documents of emerging ideas and debates in twentieth-century feminism. The ten stories of The Human Family drive home her critical perspective on feminine stereotypes. They depict a wide variety of young women as they relate to men representing different degrees of enlightenment and tolerance, struggling to express a complete and independent feminine identity in the face of the confining but often seductive roles that convention and tradition impose on female potential. The Human Family provides a subtle and nuanced perspective on European feminist writing from the turn of the last century by a woman writer who was intimately involved with the literary mainstream of her time and whose theoretical and literary works played a significant role in feminist debates of the period, prefiguring present-day feminist discourse on essentialism and constructivism.