Multiplying Female Authors, Multiplying Paper: Helmina von Chézy Reflects Herself in Carl August von Schindel’s Lexicon of Women Writers (1823–25)

What does it mean when a speaking object, the paper collar of Helmina von Chézy’s 1829 “it-narrative,” cites the multiplicity of women authors listed in a new literary lexicon? This article examines several striking intertextual connections between Helmina von Chézy, a prolific and eclectic writer—particularly in the periodical press—and Carl August von Schindel’s distinctively broad-minded lexicon of women’s writing, in which Chézy appeared in her own entry and to which she also contributed. This makes the literary text and the bibliographic lexicon, this article argues, productive partner texts. Also investigated is the resonance of Schindel’s metaphor of Makulatur (wastepaper) for women’s writing in the first decades of the nineteenth century.