| Revision as of 10:12, 22 February 2006 editBruce1ee (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers268,959 editsm copyedited← Previous edit | Revision as of 20:54, 8 May 2006 edit undoMandel (talk | contribs)4,917 edits POV. Nabokov basically trashed every single translator he knew, and also, be fair to the achievement of Garnett. She was translating for her time and not for ours.Next edit → | ||
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| Her husband, ], was a distinguished reader for the publisher ]. Her son, ], trained as a biologist and later wrote novels. | Her husband, ], was a distinguished reader for the publisher ]. Her son, ], trained as a biologist and later wrote novels. | ||
| Constance Garnett's translations of Russian classics were highly acclaimed in her time and, |
Constance Garnett's translations of Russian classics were highly acclaimed in her time and, despite some complaints about them being outdated, are still being reprinted today as they are in ]. While she kept close to the syntax and vocabulary of the original, she occasionally excised certain portions liberally, as in her translations of Dostoevsky. It is sometimes claimed that she "retold Russian literature in Victorian English"; this is not strictly true, as the English she used is ] rather than Victorian. | ||
| Today, most Russian literature experts agree her translations are outdated. Her legion of critics included ]. In his reading of a copy of Tolstoy's ''Anna Karenina'', he comments on her "incompetency", and wrote countless corrections. | |||
| ==External link== | ==External link== | ||
Revision as of 20:54, 8 May 2006
Constance Clara Garnett (née Black) (December 19, 1861 - December 17, 1946) was an English translator whose translations of nineteenth-century Russian classics first introduced them on a wide basis to the English public. Garnett is the first English translator of Dostoevsky and Chekhov.
Born in Brighton, Garnett studied Latin and Greek at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she also learned Russian, and worked shortly as a school teacher. In 1893, shortly after a visit to Moscow and Petersburg during which she met Leo Tolstoy, she started translating Russian literature, which became her life passion and resulted in English-language versions of dozens of volumes by Tolstoy, Gogol, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Turgenev, Ostrovsky and Chekhov.
Her husband, Edward Garnett, was a distinguished reader for the publisher Jonathan Cape. Her son, David Garnett, trained as a biologist and later wrote novels.
Constance Garnett's translations of Russian classics were highly acclaimed in her time and, despite some complaints about them being outdated, are still being reprinted today as they are in public domain. While she kept close to the syntax and vocabulary of the original, she occasionally excised certain portions liberally, as in her translations of Dostoevsky. It is sometimes claimed that she "retold Russian literature in Victorian English"; this is not strictly true, as the English she used is Edwardian rather than Victorian.