Fourfold Female: Birgithe Kühle’s Pioneer Norwegian Journal Provincial-Lecture (1794) and Her European Book Collection

Abstract

This article focuses on Birgithe Kühle (1762‒1832), editor of the weekly journal Provincial-Lecture [Provincial Reading] (1794) and the first known female periodical editor in Denmark-Norway. The article discusses her editorial strategies and sources and assesses her dependency on contemporary and past European culture. It also considers the presence of provincial versus central Western European influences, and of male versus female authors in a double decentring of late-eighteenth-century cultural perspectives. It does so by examining the four roles of editor, translator, book owner, and printer-publisher underpinning the production of the periodical, all adopted by women and all but one undertaken by Kühle herself.