Listen to co-curator Juliette Wells discuss Jane Austen’s novels in translation.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AROUND THE GLOBE
Alberta Burke sought out translations of Austen’s novels long before others considered them worth preserving. Thanks to her bequest, Goucher College holds what is believed to be the world’s largest collection of Austen translations. Most editions she acquired were paperbound, and their cover illustrations are quite often anachronistic. “Of course I cannot read all the languages in which I have J. A. translations!” Burke once remarked. “I can stab at a few, but the Finnish, Modern Greek, Hebrew and Japanese and Chinese, most of which were gifts from kind friends, are possessions, not useful tools.”
Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Más fuerte que el orgullo (Pride and Prejudice)
Barcelona: M. Arimany, Editor, 1944
Jane Austen’s novels were first translated during her lifetime, as can be seen from the copy of Isabelle de Montolieu’s French version of Sense and Sensibility [Raison et sensibilité] displayed nearby. Not until the twentieth century, however, were Austen’s novels widely translated. The international popularity of the 1940 MGM feature film of Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, resulted in many cover illustrators imitating the appearance of that film’s stars, as can be seen in this 1944 Spanish translation.
Translators vary widely in how they render Austen’s prose. Some employ a formal or historic-feeling literary style, while others use modern vocabulary and syntax. Austen’s characters’ names sometimes appear in English and sometimes not. Today, global audiences are as likely to first encounter Austen through television and film adaptations as through translations.
Alberta Burke was ahead of her time in valuing translations as part of her Austen collection. Decades before the internet existed, she had to work hard to acquire them. She sought out bookshops in every international city that she visited, and her friends contributed copies from their own travels. Having learned that Lady Susan had been published in Danish, Alberta Burke in 1953 walked “almost all over Copenhagen to try to find a copy, ending up at the publisher’s office . . . where he gave me their last copy.”