Member of the Bibliophiles project
London Department – Art historian, specialist in antique jewelry and indipendent literary historian.
Can you present yourself ?
I am an art historian during the day, and an independent literary historian on early mornings and late evenings. As an art historian, I specialise in antique jewellery. As an independent literary historian, I collect, study, translate, and contextualise the works of subversive German women writers of the fin de siècle.
As it turns out, they work extremely well in conjunction: I might not pick up on the subtler points of the novellas if I weren’t intimately familiar with etiquette due to studying old fashion magazines for my jewellery research; and I might not understand the sociological significance of jewellery quite as well if hadn’t also studied the literature of that era.
How did you start to collect books or to develop an interest for art and culture ?
I studied art history for a very simple reason: I knew that a good part of my lifetime would be spent working, and I wanted to make sure that I would enjoy that part of life and spend it surrounded by beauty.
I now reap the delicious fruit of that decision as I spend every day among antique jewels and books.
When it comes to book collecting, I focus on German works of the fin de siècle: non-fiction related to sexology, and Decadent literature by women writers. These themes crystallised as I realised how many extraordinary works had slipped into obscurity, and that I wanted a wider audience to learn about them. As such, my collecting is deeply connected to my literary and translation practice.
What work of art has left its mark on you ?
As a young girl, Heinrich von Kleist‘s On the Marionette Theatre set me on a course to question the nature of human consciousness — and somewhere along my path through the literary thicket, like Eve in the garden, I was bound to happen upon the figure associated with its origin: Satan. Not in a religious sense, but as a philosophical ideal of critical inquiry, creativity, and individualism. I traced these notions from Milton through Romantic, Decadent, and Nietzschean literature, leading me to where I am now.
What are your cultural projects ? What is your bibliophile dream ?
As an art historian, I am working on a book on the culture of 19th century jewellery for Hofer Antikschmuck, an antique jeweller who is as passionate as I am about restoring historical context to antique jewels. It’s an ambitious project, fully supported by contemporary sources.
As a literary historian, my first book of translations and original research is forthcoming: Maria Janitschek: A Modern Woman, MHRA. Janitschek was a pioneer of what I’d like to call Nietzschean feminism, and through researching her life I discovered countless other, now-obscure women writers who dared to tackle profoundly shocking themes – I am currently finishing up an anthology of their most extraordinary works. Based on my collection of sexological books, I am also working on an essay about the entwinement of literary culture and sadomasochism in fin de siècle Germany, set to appear in a volume about sexology.
My most immediate bibliophile dream is fairly modest: to finally own a first edition of Maria Janitschek’s Die Neue Eva (The New Eve) from 1902. It was banned by Prussian authorities and is hard to get a hold of. I’m pleased to say I’ve also translated the story they were most intent on censoring, so that an even broader audience will soon be able to read it. I abhor censorship, and this felt like a bit of late yet exquisite vengeance.
