Much scholarship and research has been devoted to the remarkable flowering of German literature during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nevertheless the contribution made by women writers remains comparatively unknown, especially in the English-speaking world. Sappho in the Shadows seeks to rectify this by examining and setting in a social and literary context the life and work of seven female poets, many of whom defied convention in an attempt to establish an independent identity. Each chapter is accompanied by examples of their poetry, together with English translations. The intention is to render the achievement of these pioneering figures more accessible to all those interested in womens' writing in the Classical/Romantic period.