Therese Albertine Luise Robinson

Therese Albertine Luise Robinson (Talvj)
portrait photograph courtesy of Edward Robinson
Born	Therese Albertine Louise von Jakob (French: Thérèse Albertine Louise von Jacob, under Napoleonic occupation.) (1797-01-26)26 January 1797 Halle, Germany
Died	13 April 1870(1870-04-13) (aged 73) Hamburg, Germany
Pen name	Talvj
Occupation	Translator, novelist, short story writer, essayist
Period	1826–1870
Genre	Translated poetry, Novella
Notable works	Volkslieder der Serben (1826), Auswanderer (1852) tr. "The Exile (1853)

Therese Albertine Luise von Jakob Robinson (26 January 1797 – 13 April 1870) was a German-American author, linguist and translator, and second wife of biblical scholar Edward Robinson. She published under the pseudonym Talvj, an acronym derived from the initials of her birth name.

The author wrote a brief autobiographical preface in the Brockhausischen Conversations-Lexikon (1840). For a complete English biography of her life and work, see Irma Elizabeth Voigt (1913).

She was born 1797 in Halle, to Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob, political writer and professor of philosophy. In 1806 or 1807, she accompanied her father's appointment to the University of Charkow, Russia (now Kharkoff, in the Ukraine), where he served three (five?) years, during which she commenced the study of Slavic languages. She was deprived of formal education, though she had access to the university library at this time. In 1810 or 1811 her father was called to a position in St. Petersburg to aid in the revision of the criminal code, and during this time she was even further denied instructions, though she read voraciously ("unendlich viel"), especially books on history. According to Voigt, none of the poetry she wrote in her St. Petersburg years were published during her lifetime, and most of it was probably destroyed, though poems such as "Sehnsucht" ('Nostalgia') from 1813 did appear in print.

In 1816, the family moved back to Halle. Though she continued to write poetry and short stories, she was reluctant to publish them publicly in her own name. She translated Walter Scott's Old Mortality and The Black Dwarf, which she published under the pseudonym "Ernst Berthold" (Halle, 1822), but this she purportedly did so for a little "pin-money" and "against her own inclination". In 1822 she submitted a series of literary criticisms, which were self-denigratingly signed "ein ".

Talvj was the pen name she invented, an anagram formed from the initials of her maiden name (née Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob) which she would use to sign her works thereafter, beginning with Psyche (1825), a collection of three short stories.