ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the problems of representativeness by applying a methodology from communication studies to a rather unique corpus of sources: Sophie Pataky's encyclopaedia German Ladies of the Pen, which is based on a complete census of women writers in German-speaking countries at the end of the nineteenth century. It demonstrates the advantages of Pataky's collection of biographies compared to other biographical encyclopaedias on women writers. The chapter describes the collective of German-speaking women writers in terms of socio-demographics, sociality, publication activities, and professional self-conceptions. It provides some insights into what social science perspectives can contribute to women's literary history. The chapter discusses the history of women writers with representative data on German women writers at the end of the nineteenth century. German-speaking women writers came from more socially elevated families than their male colleagues. Many women writers crossed the boundary between literature and journalism at the end of the nineteenth century.
