The role of the Swedish periodical Tidskrift för hemmet in the introduction of British literature in Sweden in the 1860s

Project: Research

Project Details

Popular science description

In the 1860s, the Swedish women's journal Tidskrift för hemmet translated and introduced a number of key texts from the British debate on the so-called Woman Question. This project studies the translation and discussion of British texts in this periodical with a specific focus on the role of the translators as agents in the relocation of the British debate to Sweden.

Through reviews and accounts of the contemporary English social debate, as well as through original translations and adaptations of English texts, Tidskrift för hemmet actively participated in the introduction of English texts about women’s education and work to Swedish readers. In this project I study how this Swedish domestic journal communicated an English cultural context to Swedish readers in the 1860s.

The project examines how, and to what effect, a number of English source texts were re-situated into a Swedish context through the agency of Tidskrift för hemmet. References to the ongoing debate in England were used to legitimize the periodical’s wish to draw attention to certain issues concerning women’s education and work, as well as to inspire a discussion about these matters from a Swedish perspective.

A special focus is placed on the Swedish translation of Dinah Mulock Craik’s best-selling work A Woman’s Thoughts About Women, which was carried out by and published by Tidskrift för hemmet.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date2009/01/012010/12/31