A Short Description of the Life of the Countess Kata Bethlen by Herself: Written in Transylvania in the 1740s / By: Bernard Adams / Translated from the Original Hungarian / Shaun Tyas, 2004 / Paperback

ISBN-10: 1900289644

Printed and bound by Woolnoughs of Irthlingborough

Pages 110

The Countess Kata Bethlen was a Hungarian aristocrat living in rural Transylvania in the eighteenth century. She was an outspoken, independent- minded woman of indomitable character and her highly personal memoirs tell us a great deal about contemporary life and attitudes in a region almost unknown to English speakers. Moreover, she was a Calvinist in a Catholic land and she went through the extraordinary experience of a legal battle over the custody of her children, a case eventually heard by the Holy Roman Emperor himself. She lost her case and the children were taken from her to be brought up as Catholics by their Catholic relatives. Kata Bethlen is famous in Hungary and Romania as the earliest Hungarian woman writer of note, an early religious writer, founder of religious institutions, member of an outstanding and long-lasting political family in Hungary and collector of a substantial library which included science as one of its main subjects.

She has always been known by the nickname of 'The Bereaved', first because of the loss of her parents, followed by the death in turn of both her husbands, the loss of her children in the custody battle, and the loss of other children in death. Through it all, her personality remained indomitable and her faith in the rectitude and superiority of her Calvinism unshaken. Her memoirs were first published in part in 1762, but the last section was only discovered in 1970, and both parts are included here. This is the first-ever translation into English of this important text. The whole is prefaced by a critical introduction by the trans- lator and there are explanatory footnotes, a bibliography, illustrations and an index.

Front cover illustration: the traditional portrait of the Countess from the Reformed Church Kolozsvár