Cathy McAteer - Translating Great Russian Literature

First published 2021

by Routledge

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2021 Cathy McAteer

The right of Cathy McAteer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

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ISBN: 978-0-367-50348-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-04958-6 (ebk)

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by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

I would like to thank the ERC-funded RusTrans project and the Open Research Team at the University of Exeter for supporting this publication. During the course of my research, I have received particular assistance from the following people, whom I would like especially to acknowledge: Penguin Books for their permission to use the Penguin Archive; the Magarshack family, for their interest and memories, as well as their permission to reproduce family photos and extracts from archived papers; Richard Davies at the Leeds Russian Archive; Hannah Lowery, Michael Richardson, and the Penguin Researchers' Network at the Penguin Archive, University of Bristol.

I am grateful to the anonymous benefactor of my postgraduate research, whose generosity funded me throughout my PhD; to my supervisors Dr Rajendra Chitnis (University of Oxford) and Dr Carol O'Sullivan (University of Bristol) for their guidance throughout my doctoral research (the basis for this book); and to my RusTrans colleague Dr Muireann Maguire at the University of Exeter for providing stimulating post-doctoral mentorship and research opportunities amidst an atmosphere of encouragement and good humour. I am also grateful to my editors at Routledge, and to my external reader, who remains anonymous, but who kindly gave my manuscript their blessing.

I would like to extend a special thank you to all the Penguin translators and their families, for their service to literature and the translation profession, for their direct assistance to my project, for their quirks and their passion for language. Without you, I would never have fallen in love with the Russian literary canon.

Finally, I dedicate this work to my husband, my sons, and my parents for their unstinting support.

The cultural and intellectual achievements associated with Penguin Books, as an instigator of cultural change, apply equally to Penguin's series of Russian Classics in translation, which disseminated Russian novels in Anglophone translation across continents, social strata (from academics to national servicemen), and over several decades. Launched in 1950 with Gilbert Gardiner's translation of Ivan Turgenev's On the Eve, Penguin's Russian Classics quickly progressed to include translations of Russian classics such as Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenin, War and Peace, A Hero of Our Time, Oblomov, Dead Souls, and many more. The series came to be regarded by readers both academic and general in the mid- to late-twentieth century as the de facto provider of classic Russian literature in English translation, the legacy of which reputation resonates right up to the present day. By combining publishing innovation with translations written in good, modern English and aspiring to the first Penguin Classics series editor E.V. Rieu's principle of equivalent effect, Penguin brought classic Russian literature into a post-Constance Garnett twentieth-century to suit a self-improving, inquisitive, post-war British reader. This book offers the first analysis of this popular series (from 1950-present day), identifying Penguin's Russian Classics as a modern translation publishing phenomenon.