One of Birch’s co-critics in
Nye Kritisk Tilskuer was the Norwegian Claus F. Fasting (1746–91), who upon his return to his hometown Bergen in 1777 started what was to become the country’s first quality periodical:
Provinzialblade (1778–81). The weekly magazine provided his subscribers in Southern Norway and Copenhagen with translations of stories, historical anecdotes, essays on art and philosophy, news of scientific inventions and the editor’s own poetry. While catering to a variety of readers, his aim was to ‘make the useful less tedious, and the pleasant more useful’.
1 Provinzialblade no. 52 (1778). To Fasting, the useful
and pleasant primarily meant French literature and philosophy by Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, while his readers often disagreed. His women readers wanted short stories, particularly those by Marmontel and d’Arnaud, ‘which are more famous than the most learned works
in Folio’. ‘That is exactly why there is no need to reprint them’, Fasting replied.
2 Provinzialblade no. 39 (1780). In no. 31 (1780) he had published a translation of a story by d’Arnaud, commenting that many in France and elsewhere preferred his stories to Marmontel’s, ‘perhaps rightly so’. However, towards the end of his last volume (1781) he ran a translation of ‘The Connoisseur’ (
Suite, 1761), which carries some similarities to the editor’s own difficulties in literary circles.
3 ‘Kienderen’, Provinzialblade, nos 39–46 (1781). The story of the celebrated literary critic who fails miserably as a playwright echoes Fasting’s own situation at the time.
Fasting advocated sensibility in literature and politics. Richardson’s
Clarissa and Sterne’s
Sentimental Journey were among his favourite novels. Empathy and compassion were key arguments in his continued fight against slavery, particularly in the Danish West Indies. There is a parallel call for sensibility and anti-slavery in the next periodical to pick up
Contes moraux, namely
Bibliothek for det smukke Kiøn ([Library for the fair sex]; published by Gyldendal, Copenhagen 1784–90). Again, women make up the targeted readership. The periodical boasted around three hundred subscribers across Denmark and Norway in the first two years, of whom nearly half were women of all ages. Even for a women’s periodical, that figure is remarkably large.
4 Subscribers are 284 in total, including 126 women, for vols 1–2. Normally a subscription list for a periodical would have less than 10 per cent women. Outside Copenhagen the periodical had readers in six to seven Danish towns and in Norway Christiania, Christiansand and the rural districts of Gudbrandsdalen and Rakkestad. Leading Danish women writers are among the contributors, too. The first volume opens with a sequel to Richardson’s
Clarissa, written by Charlotte Baden, while the playwright and author of moral tales Charlotta D. Biehl provides a story in the marmontelian tradition in a later issue. As in
Provinzialblade, the sensibility extends to a strong anti-slavery appeal, addressed to the women of Danish West Indies.
5 Vol. 1, no. 2 (1784). The anonymous author is the vicar Peder Paludan (1755–99) in Holbæk, Denmark.It is within this context of virtue and sentiment that we find ‘By Good Luck’ (1758), an amusing story of how a woman’s virtue is repeatedly saved from men with dubious intentions. The story is printed anonymously (as are the other stories), something one critic finds curious as Marmontel’s name would add to the text’s value.
6 LE no. 35 (1784), pp. 585–6. The anonymous editors continued this practice, but it changed with volume 4 (1786) and the new editors K. L. Rahbek and J. Kjerulf. They belonged to the prominent literary circle of their day, as did probably their predecessors and several contributors. Among Rahbek’s enormous literary production, this volume remained a particular pride and joy to him.
7 K. L. Rahbek, Erindringer af mit Liv (Copenhagen, 1825), p. 261. His translation of ‘The Good Husband’ (
Suite, 1761), a more sober story of how female virtue and family happiness results from a combination of reason and a mother’s love, comes with the author’s name. The story was probably familiar to Rahbek and his readers in the form of Charlotta D. Biehl’s comedy
The Loving Husband (1764), too.
8 LE no. 52 (1764), p. 527 and Dramatisk Journal, no. 26, 12 and 16 January 1772. The play and its popularity on the Copenhagen stage were certainly known to the playwright Rahbek and his readers.
Women readers as the
Contes’ main public is cemented in the last translation of the century, that of ‘The Sylph Husband’ (
Nouveaux, 1765) published as part of a ‘New Year’s Gift for Women’ in 1796 (by Poulsen, Copenhagen). Again, there is no mention of the author as the story appears alongside five others by anonymous authors (and an essay on female vanity).
9 Zulma, Sylphen, […] Sex Fortællinger, tilligemed en lille Afhandling om Forskiønnelses-Driften hos det smukke Kiøn (Copenhagen, 1796). One story is by Madame de Staël. Books as New Year’s gifts from the head of the household to his wife, children, staff etc. had become a booming business and a genre in its own right, with S. Poulsen as its main representative.
10 A. B. Rønning, ‘Til ‘Qvindernes Forædling’. Mary Wollstonecraft for danske lesere i 1800’, in Bjørkøy et al. (eds), Litterære verdensborgere (Oslo, 2019), pp. 290–309; H. Ilsøe, ‘Godt Nytår! Nytårshilsener fra 2-300 år siden’, Magasin Fra Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 7:3 (1992), 3–22 <https://doi.org/10.7146/mag.v7i3.66302>. The leading critical journal, (for short known as)
Lærde Efterretninger, was dismissive of the collection, adding that ‘The Sylph Husband’ is as ‘banal and un-psychological as can be’.
11 LE no.7 (1796), p. 107: ‘saa flau og upsychologisk som mueligt’. The
Contes moraux had travelled far in the northern literary market, from the high mark of taste and academic debate to proponents of moral and sentiment finally to anonymous entertainment in bad taste.
Overall, between 1767 and 1796, 16 of the 23
Contes moraux had been translated and only one (or perhaps two) in two different translations. Although the stories may appear randomly over almost three decades, combined they amount to a collective effort of translating the collection. In 1790, in the wake of the political and social turmoil of the Revolution, Marmontel returned to the genre and the
Mercure with instalments of
Nouveaux contes moraux. They soon reached Denmark–Norway and appeared in translation in periodicals as well as in a volume (five stories translated by K. L. Rahbek,
Nyeste Fortællinger, 1794). By now the genre had several local exponents, notably Rahbek himself (collected in
Samlede Fortællinger, 4 vols, 1804–14) and Charlotta D. Biehl (
Moralske Fortællinger, 4 vols, 1781–82). Biehl wrote them explicitly for girls inexperienced in the matters of the heart, underlining a general tendency for the genre.
12 C. Biehl’s afterword, ‘Til Læseren!’, in her Moralske Fortællinger, vol. 4 (Copenhagen, 1782).