ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century in Europe saw an unprecedented expansion in scholarship, translation, and literary reviewing. This was fuelled by the rapid expansion of the periodical press and a huge increase in the book market, developments which were in turn responding to the intellectual needs of an increasingly literate population. One notable side-effect of this publishing boom was a marked upturn in the transnational exchange of ideas with scholars from across the continent and beyond engaged in the dissemination, study, and recording of cultural artefacts and literary debates, their interests ranging from Spain in the south to the Scandinavian north. Some of these, such as the Brothers Grimm, became influential household names across Europe, their work setting the standard for future scholarship in the fields of philology, translation, and literary history; others, although influential and well-connected in their day, were destined to remain in the shadows, forgotten by the very disciplines they sought, often without remuneration, to advance. Yet, without these figures, the literary and cultural landscape of Europe would not have developed as it did. It is their work — in terms of motivation, transnationality, and reception — which is the subject of this essay.
