Anna Katharina and Michelle James, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages

For several years, researchers on the BYU Sophie Project have been working to compile The Critically Annotated Collected Works of Elisa von der Recke. The aim of this project was the make Recke’s writings more accessible and readable to users across the world, since most of these texts are currently very difficult to access. The texts have been transcribed from the original and exhaustively proofread to ensure an accurate reproduction. The goal of my ORCA project was to complete both the annotations and bibliographic data for Volume I, as these are the final tasks to accomplish in order to prepare the volume for publication. The final publication will be in an e-book format.

This project provides the German-speaking academic world with the collected and annotated works of Elisa von der Recke. Such a collection has never been made before, and the texts included are currently not easily available. Elisa von der Recke is a figure of historical, cultural, and literary significance. Though most of her works have now vanished into the dust of libraries, during her life as an author, traveler, social luminary, and salonnière, Elisa von der Recke stood at the crossroads of European history and culture. In this collected works, for the very first time, all of her journals, memoirs, letters, poetry, and other writings will be collected and assembled into one place.

Although students had been working on the annotations for Volume I during the past year, there were still a number of references to people, places, or cultural artifacts which they had not yet been able to define and which required deeper, more specific research. There were also a number of notes which existed only as sketches or which had been poorly written. Similarly, although students had collected most of the primary and secondary sources needed for a complete bibliography for and about Recke and her writings, much of the information was still incomplete as well as incorrectly and inconsistently formatted. The purpose of my project was the bring this body of partially completed work into a consistent, clear, correct final form.

Annotating was the core of this research project. Since Volume I includes over 1500 pages of letters, journal entries, and related writings by Elisa von der Recke and her contemporaries in the original German, extensive annotation was required so that the modern reader can understand the less familiar words and sentence structures used in these documents, as well as references to people and places contemporary to Recke, which may otherwise be unfamiliar. Without these annotations, the final publication would only be a reproduction of her writings. However the purpose of this project was to make Recke’s writing more accessible and understandable to students and scholars of German culture, history, and literature across the world. I completed the annotations for Volume I through more specific and detailed research than the previous student researchers have been able to provide.

One of the key elements in the Recke collected works was a complete list of bibliographic information on both Recke’s primary sources and secondary sources about her writings. Other researchers had begun to compile a bibliography of these primary and secondary sources related to Recke’s writings, but the lists they had provided were confusing and incomplete, and the formatting was inconsistent or at times incorrect. I ensured that all the information in this bibliography was complete and correctly presented.

Prior to the start of my project, the texts of the memoirs and letters which are included in Volume I had been transcribed, formatted, and edited, and were ready for publication. I acted as the final editor as the volume was finalized, ensuring consistency in editing the annotations, doing the research necessary to complete the annotations, and finishing and inserting the bibliographic information. The summer turned out to be more challenging than anticipated, so we do not currently have a publication timeline. However, we are currently seeking a publisher, and proposals have been sent out to various editors, awaiting acceptance.