10 h 21 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 10 h 21 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your hunger to learn reaches far beyond the life your family expects you to live?
In Letters of a Javanese Princess, Raden Adjeng Kartini writes from inside the closed world of Javanese nobility. The daughter of a regent in Jepara, she longs to read, learn and be useful. Her letters to friends in the Netherlands reveal the pressure to marry and the limits placed on girls whose families choose their futures.
Writing to correspondents including Stella Zeehandelaar, Kartini makes the case for girls’ education with humor, anger and doubt. She questions marriage customs while writing warmly about her family, Java, its people and its crafts. These letters bring you close to a young thinker who wants change without turning away from the people and place she loves.
What you’ll discover
- Behind closed doors See how rank shapes a young woman’s days while narrowing her choices.
- Friendship across the sea Follow letters that give Kartini room to share her questions, hopes and frustrations.
- The pressure to marry Encounter her thoughts on customs that leave girls little say in their futures.
- Education as a door Explore her belief that girls must learn, and her hunger to be useful.
- Java, loved and questioned Discover the warmth for her island that lives alongside her criticism of its customs.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who love real voices from the past, stories of girls who asked for an education, and anyone curious about Java and the first steps of women's rights in Asia.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Confinement gives her questions new force
- Character matters more than inherited rank
- A livelihood gives women a defence
- Gratitude does not silence her criticism
- Letters open a world beyond home
- Her father's love complicates her freedom
- Faith is proved through kindness
- Her plans change but purpose remains
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Letters of a Javanese Princess in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Letters of a Javanese Princess
by Raden Adjeng Kartini · 1911
Behind a high wall, a twelve-year-old Javanese girl stays connected to the world through Dutch books and letters.
Medium level5–10 hours to read2 languages
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In short
What happens when a clever girl is shut behind a wall at twelve, with Dutch books and letters for company? Raden Adjeng Kartini lived that life in Japara, on the north coast of Java, and she wrote it down.
Letters of a Javanese Princess at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h4 h 45 min fast, 7 h 5 min slow
- Length
- 85,400 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1911by Raden Adjeng Kartini
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A walled garden shapes a rebel mind
Kartini begins by telling a Dutch friend who she is. She is the eldest of three unmarried daughters of the Regent of Japara. Her grandfather welcomed Western learning, and her brothers went on to the highest schools in the colony.
The girls were a different matter. Custom said a girl must not leave the house. Kartini attended a European grammar school, but when she was twelve and a half, the door closed. She went into what she calls the box, where girls wait behind walls for a husband their parents will choose.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1911
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 6 h 40 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Kartini. Letters of a Javanese Princess. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/letters-of-a-javanese-princess.
Kartini. (2026). Letters of a Javanese princess. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/letters-of-a-javanese-princess (Original work published 1911)
Kartini. Letters of a Javanese Princess. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/letters-of-a-javanese-princess.
@book{kartini2026letters,
author = {Kartini},
title = {Letters of a Javanese Princess},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/letters-of-a-javanese-princess},
note = {First published 1911}
}
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What is Letters of a Javanese Princess about?
It collects letters written by Kartini between 1899 and 1904 to Dutch friends. She describes life in a Javanese noble house, criticizes forced marriage and polygamy, asks for education for girls, and shares her plans for a school.
Was Kartini really a princess?
Not in the sense Europeans imagined. She was the daughter of a regent, a high Javanese official, and she herself says she is no princess. She preferred nobility of mind and soul to rank by birth.
Who was Stella in the letters?
Stella is the Dutch friend to whom Kartini writes many of the letters in the early part of the book. She calls her a kindred spirit and shares her hopes, fears and thoughts about the women's movement.
The author
Raden Adjeng Kartini
1879–1904 · Indonesian feminist and letter writer
Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879–1904) was a Javanese writer who lived in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. She was born in Jepara and died in Rembang. She wrote letters in Dutch during the late 1890s and early 1900s. A collection of her letters was published after her death, in 1911.
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