Happy birthday

[E. Wayles Browne]

26 January 1997 marks the 200th anniversary of Talvj's birth.
"Talvj" was the pseudonym of a German-American translator, Slavist, and
novelist. She was born in Germany 26 January 1797 and named Therese
Albertine Louise von Jacob (Jakob). In childhood she lived in
Ukraine and Russia. In 1824, back in Germany, she began translating
epic songs from Vuk Karadzic's collection from Serbo-Croatian to German,
at the request of none other than Goethe.
She married an American theologian, Edward Robinson, and moved with
him to Massachusetts in 1830. In 1834 she published the first of a series
of articles about the Slavic peoples and literatures; a revised version
came out as a book, _Historical View of the Languages and Literature
of the Slavic Nations; with a Sketch of their Popular Poetry_ (New York:
Putnam, 1850). Her works gave the American reading public
the first more or less reliable information about the Slavs it had ever
seen.
She continued to write novels, stories, and essays in both German
and English.
She returned to Germany in 1864 and died there in 1870.
She was our first Slavist. Who was our second?


Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu