From reading to writing: Women authors and book collectors at the wolfenbüttel court, A case study of georg philipp harsdörffer's Frauenzimmer gesprächspiele (1641-1658)

Marks of ownership and book inventories attest that several women from the court at Wolfenbüttel owned copies of Georg Philipp Harsdörffer's Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele (1641-57), one of the earliest literary works in the German language to be directed specifically at women as well as men. These books were often treasured objects of matrilineal inheritance. The dynastic women from Wolfenbüttel who owned the Gesprächspiele were authors in their own right, demonstrating a correlation between ownership of the Gesprächspiele and female literary agency.