Lydia Emilie Florentine Jannsen (Vana-Vändra 1843 – Kronstadt 1886), daughter of the journalist Johann Voldemar Jannsen, and his assistant in newspaper editing, wrote under her pen name “Lydia Koidula”. Koidula, raised in an intellectual and nationally-minded family, was educated at the German grammar school of Pärnu and became acquainted with many leading personalities as they visited the parental house. Her correspondence with Kreutzwald and Jakobson helped to shape her worldview and writing style.

She went on to become the country’s foremost poet. Her poetry had some German Biedermeier influences, probably from her experience as a translator of German literature. While, in her translations, she maintained greater fidelity to the originals than was usual in the (rather loose) adaptations current at the time, she used the occasion to deploy to the fullest the literary potential of the Estonian language.

Her first verse collection, “Meadow flowers” (Vainulilled), was published in 1866, followed in 1867 by the collection “The nightingale of Emajõgi” (Emajõe Ööbik). Subsequent poems appeared in periodicals; many remained unpublished. The most influential part of Koidula’s work is patriotic in nature; many of her patriotic poems were set to music as songs and disseminated as such. They idealize ancient freedom and look forward to a new dawn for Estonians. Other poems are pastoral or amorous. Koidula’s prose tales (many of them adaptions from German) were mainly published in her father’s newspaper; the plots and settings of her original work thematize rural life, migration and contemporary problems.

Estonian theatre began with plays written and staged by Koidula, who was an active member of the Vanemuine Society. She was the first to write original plays in Estonian, earlier plays having been translations or adaptions. The first, “The cousin from Saaremaa” (Saaremaa onupoeg) was a comedy staged by the Vanemuine Society on its fifth anniversary (1870). Koidula had used the plot of Theodor Körner’s farce Der Vetter aus Bremen, but added typically Estonian elements. The popular play was shortly followed by two others: Maret and Miina was staged in the autumn of 1870, and the first completely Estonian play, “What a bumpkin!” (Säärane mulk), in the spring of 1871. It was based on an anecdotal story from real life, describing the misfortunes of a man who misunderstood a sales advertisement in a newspaper. She staged the plays herself, thus becoming the first Estonian director. In addition, she helped to organize the first Estonian song festival of 1869.

In 1873, Koidula married a Latvian physician employed in the Russian army. The newlyweds moved to Kronstadt, where Koidula, heavily afflicted by homesickness, continued to write poetry and to contribute to her father’s newspaper. She died of cancer in 1886.