Translation within the margin: The "Libraries" of Henry Bohn
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Carol O’Sullivan
Abstract
This chapter considers the Victorian publisher Henry G. Bohn as a pioneer in the publishing of translated classics for a general market. Through his ‘Standard Library’, established in 1846, and the equally successful ‘Classical Library’ (1848), Bohn made literature in translation available to a mass readership at the then low prices of three shillings and sixpence or five shillings. Targeted at the Victorian reader eager for self-improvement, most of the volumes in Bohn’s Libraries were highly improving in nature, with an emphasis on history, biography and philosophy, much of it by Continental authors. Bohn’s catalogue also included, however, some of the more notorious classics of European literature, including the Decameron (published 1855), Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1855), the Satyricon of Petronius (1854), the poems of Catullus (1854), Apuleius’s Golden Ass (1853) and the epigrams of Martial (1860). While ‘unexpurgated’ translations of some of these works would be published for private circulation in the Victorian period, the norms of the period required that they be censored to fit them for a general market.
Abstract
This chapter considers the Victorian publisher Henry G. Bohn as a pioneer in the publishing of translated classics for a general market. Through his ‘Standard Library’, established in 1846, and the equally successful ‘Classical Library’ (1848), Bohn made literature in translation available to a mass readership at the then low prices of three shillings and sixpence or five shillings. Targeted at the Victorian reader eager for self-improvement, most of the volumes in Bohn’s Libraries were highly improving in nature, with an emphasis on history, biography and philosophy, much of it by Continental authors. Bohn’s catalogue also included, however, some of the more notorious classics of European literature, including the Decameron (published 1855), Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1855), the Satyricon of Petronius (1854), the poems of Catullus (1854), Apuleius’s Golden Ass (1853) and the epigrams of Martial (1860). While ‘unexpurgated’ translations of some of these works would be published for private circulation in the Victorian period, the norms of the period required that they be censored to fit them for a general market.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction: Agents of translation and Translation Studies 1
- Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner 19
- Translating cultural paradigms: The role of the Revue Britannique for the first Brazilian fiction writers 43
- Translation as representation: Fukuzawa Yukichi's representation of the "Others" 63
- Vizetelly & Company as (ex)change agent: Towards the modernization of the British publishing industry 85
- Translation within the margin: The "Libraries" of Henry Bohn 107
- Translating Europe: The case of Ahmed Midhat as an Ottoman agent of translation 131
- A cultural agent against the forces of culture: Hasan-Âli Yücel 161
- Limits of freedom: Agency, choice and constraints in the work of the translator 189
- Cheikh Anta Diop: Translation at the service of history 209
- The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations: Sur, Poesía Buenos Aires , and Diario de Poesía as aesthetic arenas for twentieth-century Argentine letters 229
- The role of Haroldo and Augusto de Campos in bringing translation to the fore of literary activity in Brazil 257
- The theatre translator as a cultural agent: A case study 279
- Embassy networks: Translating post-war Bosnian poetry into English 301
- Notes on contributors 327
- Index 331
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction: Agents of translation and Translation Studies 1
- Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner 19
- Translating cultural paradigms: The role of the Revue Britannique for the first Brazilian fiction writers 43
- Translation as representation: Fukuzawa Yukichi's representation of the "Others" 63
- Vizetelly & Company as (ex)change agent: Towards the modernization of the British publishing industry 85
- Translation within the margin: The "Libraries" of Henry Bohn 107
- Translating Europe: The case of Ahmed Midhat as an Ottoman agent of translation 131
- A cultural agent against the forces of culture: Hasan-Âli Yücel 161
- Limits of freedom: Agency, choice and constraints in the work of the translator 189
- Cheikh Anta Diop: Translation at the service of history 209
- The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations: Sur, Poesía Buenos Aires , and Diario de Poesía as aesthetic arenas for twentieth-century Argentine letters 229
- The role of Haroldo and Augusto de Campos in bringing translation to the fore of literary activity in Brazil 257
- The theatre translator as a cultural agent: A case study 279
- Embassy networks: Translating post-war Bosnian poetry into English 301
- Notes on contributors 327
- Index 331
