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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by John K (talk | contribs) at 23:46, 24 September 2006 (What in the world is Edwardian English? Garnett modeled her translations on 19th century English novels, at any rate, so "Victorian" seems a fair description). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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 also the first English translator of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton 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translations of Russian classics were highly acclaimed in her time and, despite some complaints about them being outdated, are still being reprinted today as they are in public domain.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".

External link

• Works by Constance Garnett at Project Gutenberg

• 1861 births
• 1946 deaths
• Russian-English translators
• Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge