The Osijek Writer Vilma Vukelić from a History of Reading Perspective

Abstract

Following the methodological framework of Robert Darnton and his micro-analytical approach to studying the history of reading, this paper attempts to reconstruct the reading profile of Vilma Vukelić, a still insufficiently known Croatian writer who expressed herself in German. By applying a content analysis of the author’s memoirs and the extensive family chronicle of her grandson, the aim is to determine what Vilma Vukelić read during her life, who and what influenced her reading tastes, why and how she read, the context of her reading habits, and what books and reading meant to her. The results of the analysis offer a fairly detailed insight into the reading world of her youth, but we know somewhat less about her reading preferences as an adult, when she devoted herself more to writing. Still, even such a partial reconstruction of her reading profile reveals that Vilma Vukelić was a great lover of books and reading, well-acquainted with European and Croatian literature, and that she followed the literary trends as well as the ideas and political currents of the first half of the 20^th century with interest. The books she read certainly had a great influence on shaping her feminist and left-wing views.