This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bruce1ee (talk | contribs) at 10:12, 22 February 2006 (copyedited). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 10:12, 22 February 2006 by Bruce1ee (talk | contribs) (copyedited)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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, because the translations are now in the public domain, are still being reprinted today. 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.
Today, most Russian literature experts agree her translations are outdated. Her legion of critics included Vladimir Nabokov. In his reading of a copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, he comments on her "incompetency", and wrote countless corrections.