ABSTRACT
Sophie Louise Charlotte Baden attained a prominent place in Danish letters as a novelist, correspondent, and a frequent contributor to Bibliotek for det smukke Ki0n (Library for the Fair Sex), a journal especially for aristocratic literary and literate women in Copenhagen. Baden's work as a novelist first took the form of a story in letters, Den fortsatte Grandison (1784; The Grandison Continuation); together with a series of letters and another shorter story, Den fortsatte Grandison was first published as a complete novel in 1792, upon the recommendation of enthusiastic readers and the editors of the Bibliotek. Charlotte Baden became a prominent spokeswoman for such cardinal personal virtues as true sensitivity, authenticity, and rural simplicity Baden also contributed anonymous sketches and letters to Morgenposten (The Morning Post) and Bircbs Billedgallerie (Birch's Picture Gallery); one of her sketches in the latter journal , "Billeder af en K0benhavnsk Dukke" (Pictures of a Copenhagen Doll), depicts (through letters) the shallowness, superficiality, and coquetterie of the Copenhagen writer, Dorette, in contrast to the wholesomeness of the unaffected rural girl, Lovise (Dalager, pp. 117-118). Charlotte Baden built her major work, Den fortsatte Grandison, upon the precursor novel of Samuel Richardson, the very popular English novelist; Richardson's novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-1754) served as the form and contextual precedent for Baden's own sequel in letter
form. Baden also adapted Richardson's view of women as the true ennobling moral force that holds socially destructive tendencies (and male passions) at bay.
