Although Prussia’s beloved Queen Luise and the Swiss-born aristocrat and writer Germaine de Staël were Napoleon Bonaparte’s best-known female opponents, women’s discontent with Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars was more widespread—and vocal—than once assumed. Women against Napoleon expands our awareness of the range of women’s responses to the despot by presenting an international spectrum of female opposition, including contemporary letters, diaries, and published writings, as well as historical fiction of the twentieth century. By setting these materials together, this volume forges new links between literary, historical, and gender scholarship.

Waltraud Maierhofer is associate professor of German at the University of Iowa.
Gertrud M. Roesch is professor of German as a second language at Heidelberg University. Caroline Bland is lecturer in Germanic studies at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.