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The Professor in Germany

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The first German translation of The Professor was published in 1858 in Stuttgart, translated "Aus dem Englischen von Dr. Büchele", as it says on the title page.

Title page of the 1858 German The Professor

This edition was republished in facsimile form in 2015 by Reink Books, as a print on demand book. A 2016 copy has also been spotted (but we have not included it in the statistical analysis article for that year).

The second and only other translation was published for the first time in 1990, by Ars Vivendi from Cadolzburg (302 pp.). It was done by Gottfried Röckelein, who also translated Jane Eyre.

Cover of the 1990 German The Professor



Ars Vivendi republished it in 1993, with a different cover,

Cover of the 1993 Ars Vivendi
German The Professor

It was republished in 1991 by Insel (from Frankfurt and Leipzig; 372 pp.).

Cover of the 1991 German
The Professor

Insel republished it in 1993, 1999, 2001, 2005 and 2009 with the same cover (and the same amount of pages). In 2014 they again published it, with a different cover.

Cover of the 2014 German
The Professor

The last edition, so far, was published again by Ars Vivendi, in this year, 2016. The amount of pages was reduced to 311.

Cover of the 2016 Ars Vivendi
German The Professor

The other Bronte͏̈ novels
As far as could be gathered the first German translation of Jane Eyre was published in 1850, after Shirley which has an 1849 translation. Wuthering Height and Agnes Grey follow closely, with 1851. The first The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is from 1990.

Eric Ruijssenaars


Yorkshire and Irish roots explored: talks by Blake Morrison and MonicaWallace on Saturday 22 October 2016

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Ireland and Yorkshire were both featured in our day of talks on 22 October. The Yorkshire writer Blake Morrison, who is half Irish, spoke about growing up near Haworth and his play We Are Three Sisters. Monica Wallace, who recently returned to her native Dublin after five years working in Brussels, returned to Belgium to give us a talk on Charlotte Brontë’s Irish honeymoon.

Blake Morrison and the Brontës

Blake Morrison began his talk by drawing out parallels between his own childhood and the Brontës’. He told us about growing up near Skipton close to the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, in an old rectory at the top of the village, not far from Pendle Hill where the ‘Pendle Witches’ famous in local legend were hanged in 1612. His mother was Irish and his father, as a doctor (in fact both parents were doctors) was an important man in the village just as Patrick Brontë the parson was in Haworth. He told us about reading Jane Eyre in secret as a teenager – in secret because it was not considered boys’ reading in the laddish Yorkshire culture of the time; it was not on the curriculum at the boys’ grammar school he attended – and about the affinity he felt with the young Jane and the novel’s power as a book for young adults. Blake told us how he found out that his mother was hiding her copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in her bedside table around the same time that he was hiding his of Jane Eyre (a novel that when it first came out was also regarded as a ‘naughty’ book!).

Blake Morrison

Blake went on to tell us how he came to write his play about the Brontës, We are three sisters. First he recounted how an earlier Brontë-inspired stage production, a musical version of Wuthering Heights he wrote in 1986, was never performed; four other musical versions of the novel were doing the rounds at the time and in the end Heathcliff with lyrics by Tim Rice, starring Cliff Richard, was the only one to be staged. To give us a taste of his own version of Wuthering Heights, Blake read us the ballad Isabella’s Song, which starts:

As I stepped out one summer night

to feed my white ring-dove

a shadow fell across the gate

and swore undying love.

The shadow stretched out tall and slim,

its face was black as night.

It spoke to me of wedding-rings

and bridesmaids bathed in light ….

The full poem can be read in his book of verse A discoverie of Witches (2012) prompted by the Pennine landscape in which he grew up. In a very different mood, the collection also includes the Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper, an exploration - in dialect - of the deeds and motives of Peter Sutcliffe, convicted of killing 13 women in 1981. Morrison has never shrunk from tackling such subjects, and has written a book on the James Bulger murder case.

Blake Morrison chatting to a
Brussels Brontë Group member

Turning to the genesis of his play We Are Three Sisters, in which he took up the challenge of re-writing Chekhov’s play with Charlotte, Emily and Anne as the sisters, Blake told us that when a theatre critic friend first suggested the idea to him, he dismissed it as ‘bonkers’. He was however persuaded to go ahead with the project by the artistic director of the theatre company Northern Broadsides, which staged the play in 2011.

In Blake’s play, Moscow, to which Chekhov’s three sisters long to go, has become London, and, similarly, various characters in the Chekhov play are replaced by equivalent characters from the Brontës’ circle (their doctor, Patrick’s curate). Blake explained that although he used the Brontës own words in his text where possible, the use of Chekhov’s play as a basis meant he had to take some liberties with the Brontës’ life story, with sometimes amusing results. For example, in his play the woman with whom Branwell is believed to have had an affair, his employer’s wife Lydia Robinson, turns up at the Parsonage, which she never visited in real life. Members of our group read out extracts from two scenes in the play: Charlotte and Anne telling Emily about their trip to reveal their identity to the publisher George Smith in London, and Charlotte telling her father about the publication of Jane Eyre.

Contrary to the common perception of the Brontës’ lives as eventless, Blake found them full of interest and drama and wanted to show Haworth as less bleak than it is generally portrayed. His play has many touches of humour and he describes it as a ‘tragi-comedy’, much like the original Chekhov.

In the course of the talk, in addition to some of his poems, Blake read us extracts from his memoir And when did you last see your father? Made into a film in 2007 starring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth, it contains many memories of his childhood. By the end of his time with us we had gained many insights into his personal background and the wide range of his literary output as well as becoming acquainted with his Brontë play.

Charlotte Brontë in Ireland

It was good to welcome back Monica Wallace, who has spoken to our group before and was an active member of it when working in Brussels as transport attaché for Ireland in 2009-14. She is now back in Dublin, working for the Irish transport department. For this presentation she researched the family of Charlotte Brontë’s husband, the Anglican clergyman Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the route taken by the couple on their honeymoon in the summer of 1854 at the start of their brief marriage (Charlotte died 9 months later in March 1855).

The Brussels Brontë Group
Monica Wallace

Monica began by filling us in on Nicholls’ family – born in County Antrim as one of a large family that was struggling financially, he was adopted at a young age by a more affluent uncle, his mother’s brother Alan Bell, who ran a school in Banagher. Arthur never saw his own parents again; his mother died 5 years later. Like Charlotte, he had a stint as a badly-paid teacher when he helped out at his uncle’s school. His biographer Alan Adamson (whose widow Monica met on a trip to Canada) speculates that despite Arthur’s happiness in his new family, he probably suffered from insecurity as a result of these upheavals and financial problems in his early days.

Monica also filled us in on some of the developments in Irish history in Nicholls’ and Patrick Brontë’s lifetimes, for example Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Catholic Emancipation, which was followed with interest by the Brontës; the Anglican Patrick Brontë initially opposed it but changed his position. She sketched conditions in Ireland at the time of Charlotte’s visit and the often condescending attitudes of English visitors to the country, such as Thackeray.

The Brussels Brontë Group
Monica Wallace fills us in on Arthur Nicholls' family

She then took us on a richly-illustrated tour of the honeymoon route, starting in Dún Laoghaire (where Monica herself lives) and thence to Cuba House, the family home in Banagher, via Dublin. From there, Charlotte and Arthur went on to visit Kilkee, Tarbert in Co. Limerick and Tralee, the Lakes of Killarney and the Gap of Dunloe (where Charlotte escaped unharmed when thrown from her horse) in Co. Kerry. We saw some of the hotels where they stayed and learned that at that period hotels were strictly segregated into Protestant and Catholic.

We gleaned fascinating snippets about Arthur’s family, such as that one of his brothers had a daughter named Charlotte Brontë Nicholls, and Banagher: Anthony Trollope lived there in the 1840s in the first years of his marriage and is sure to have met the Bells.

Arthur Bell Nicholls

Charlotte may have had some misapprehensions about the Bell family. For example, she appears to have believed that Cuba House was owned by the family (in fact it came courtesy of the school of which Alan Bell was headmaster) and that Nicholls’ aunt Bell was educated in England (actually she spent just one week at an English boarding school before being brought back to Ireland as her family missed her). What is certain is that where the Bell family was concerned Charlotte was forced to abandon her prejudices against Ireland, and had nothing but praise for her in-laws’ ‘gentility’ and kindness. She also gave positive reports of her new husband as she began to really get to know him for the first time, in his native country and his family circle.

Helen MacEwan

The Translations, a Statistical Analysis - Part one

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Having found nearly all translations we can get a good picture of how Villette and The Professor in time spread around the world. About half of the translated Villette and The Professor editions were published in the last 30 years. Some of these years have been very productive, although there have been remarkably good years earlier too. These best years, and decades, will be revealed below. Among other aspects there is also a review of the total amount of languages for all of the Brontë novels.

Winning years
We’ll begin with giving the winning years. For both Villette and The Professor it was 2013, with 9 and 10 translated editions respectively. For Villette the years 1932 (thanks to one French translation) and 2011 come second with 7, while 1975 and 2008 come next with 6. In the The Professor competition 2013 is the best year with 10 translated editions, while 2005, 2009, 2014, 2015 and 2016 come joint second with 8. When the figures for both books are combined 2013 comes out as the clear winner, with 19. The years 2014 and 2015 are on second place with 13, followed by 2005 with 12. In tables 1, 2 and 3 more good years are shown for the novels in these competitions.





Decades
The years show a clear trend. It started quite slowly, but the amount of translated editions first really started to grow in the 1940s. It has been a quite regular growth since then, as this graph shows, as well as the accumulated total of translations of both novels. At present it is 211 for Villette and 150 for The Professor.



By 1920 The Professor had taken a 14-8 lead, but from then on till the end of the century Villette won every decade: 1920s, 4-0; 1930s, 13-2; 1940s, 18-10; 1950s, 15-8; 1960s, 16-3; 1970s, 29-10; 1980s, 16-3 and 1990s, 26-15 (Note: the year of publishing of 12 French Villettes is not known, 7 are from between 1933 and 1948, 5 between 1950 and 1978, these have been divided here over these 5 decades in this count. Two unknown editions of The Professor have been given to the 2000s and 2010s). In this century The Professor won the first decade, 41-32, and is in the lead in this present decade, 42-34. It is remarkable that this present decade is already the best scoring one, with more than 4 years to go.

In table 4 the full figures for the decades are given, and they're also shown in the second graph. Only the known years are included here.




The 1970s
In the 1970s the score of translated editions more than doubled in comparison to the previous decade. It was the great leap forward for Villette. It is an interesting phenomenon that the novel owes much here to Eastern European, then communist countries. Out of 27 editions, 19 were published there, divided over 7 countries. Serbia was a clear winner with 7 Villettes. Croatia came second with 4. Germany is third with 3, with two from East Germany.

The following decades
The communists continued to show more interest in the 1980s. They had a majority in languages and editions. But Germany was the winning country, West-Germany, with 4. Remarkably, three years had no translation of Villette or The Professor at all, 1981, 1982 and 1988. The only other year to do that since 1943 was 1954.

Although communism fell in eastern Europe in 1989 the countries continued to dominate the statistics, with Villette majorities in the amount of languages (9 out of 15) and editions (16 out of 26) in the 1990s. It was helped by a Chinese edition, still a communist country. Russian was the individual winner, with 5 editions. German is second with 4. Russia scores a resounding victory in the 2000s, with 15 Villettes! The Netherlands come second with 3. The decade has 11 languages, and 31 editions. The 2010s have already got 17 languages for Villette, and 34 editions. Russian has taken a lead. It’s on 6 (editions). Italian is on 5, German and Brazilian-Portuguese have 3.

Table 5 gives the winning decades for both novels together, tables 6 and 7 give the Villette and The Professor results.





Villette: Countries and translators
The Dutch language scores a resounding victory in the competition of the most different translations of Villette. It includes one translation that is probably Flemish. It has 7. Germany has 5, Italy has 4.
Russian is the winner in the race of languages with most editions, with 30, followed by French with 27 (it includes a Belgian and two Swiss editions). Germany has 20, Dutch has 12 and Hungarian is fifth with 11. Russia appears to have the best running single translation. It got to 27 editions!

Henriette Loreau is easily the winner in the longest running category. Her French translation of The Professor was first published in 1858, and last in 2015. That's a near-perfect score of 157 years! Tyyni Haapanen-Tallgren is on second place with a splendid 94 years with her Finnish Villette (1921-2015). Róża Centnerszwerowa comes third with 74 years, with her Polish Villette (1939-2013). The first man is on fourth place. Gaston Baccara is on 68 years with his French Villette (1945-2013). It will be very interesting of course to see what the score will look like in 20 years time.

Women easily win the translator competitions, as could be expected. They have most translations and editions. One translation was done by two men, the Arab Villette. Its cover drawing, joint nr. 1 in the cover top 6, was made by a woman, Safwa Farid, I recently learnt.)

Eric Ruijssenaars
(with thanks to Rene van Oers for the tables and graphs, and for earlier efforts to make documents publishable on the blog.))


Villette in French – Part Three

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The first translation of Villette in French after (the abridged) La Maitresse d'Anglais was published in 1932 by Gallimard from Paris. It got to a remarkable seven editions that year, and a very good total of 23 editions altogether in 47 years. The 1932 and later editions, up to the fifteenth in 1949, probably all had (almost) the same cover.

Cover of the first 1949 French
Gallimard Villette

The translation was done by Albine Loisy and Brian Telford. Loisy-Léger (1909-?) also translated George Eliot's Middlemarch, Adam Bede and Silas Marner, and wrote two novels herself. Very little could be found about Telford.

The next editions that can be traced are the fifteenth and sixteenth from 1949. We don't know when exactly the eight to fourteenth editions were published. Gallimard introduced a new cover for the sixteenth edition.

Cover of the second 1949 French
Gallimard Villette

Nor can the 17th to 21st editions be found. The 22nd and 23rd were published in 1979. These covers couldn't be found too. The last one is said to be a facsimile reprint of the first 1932 edition. All these Gallimard editions seem to have had 630 pages. It may well be of course that there were only two different Gallimard covers, although there will have been more small variations. It is very remarkable and disappointing that so many editions are missing. In no other country has a Villette gone missing, let alone a dozen.


A new translation, by Gaston Baccara, was first published in 1945 by La Boétie from Brussels (432 pp.). He also translated Wuthering Heights. It makes it the first Belgian Villette since the 1855 La Maitresse d'Anglais. Baccara also translated from Dutch and German, which makes it even more likely that he was Belgian.

Cover of the 1945 Belgian Villette

La Boétie republished it in 1947, with a different cover.

Cover of the 1947 Belgian Villette

The third edition was published in 1949, the fourth in 1958 by Gérard et Cie from Verviers, Belgium (506 pp.).  The covers couldn't be found.

In its fifth and sixth to eight editions, from 1990 and 2004, Villette got in one book with Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, published by Robert Laffont. The 1990 edition has 905 pages, while there are three versions of the 2004 edition, with 905, 930 and 960 pages. In the editions of 905 Villette is on pages 431 to 898.

Cover of the 1990 French Villette

Cover of the 2004 French Villette
Baccara got his ninth in 2013, when it was published by Archipoche from Paris (713 pp.), with a preface by Isabelle Viéville Degeorges. It gets him to number four on the list of longest running translations, with 68 years, and number three for Villette. It will take at least until 2107 though before he could possibly overtake pole position. The number one from France has 158 years with her translation of The Professor. Its history will be described in the next articles.

Cover of the 2013 French Villette 
(Painting: opera singer Maria Malibran
 as Rossini's Desdemona by François Bouchot, 1834)

A fourth new translation (after the 1950 Swiss-FrenchVillette) was published in 1975. It appears to have been published in Antwerp by Atlanta. The translation was done by Georges Hubeau, about whom nothing else is known. Nor can the cover be found. It was published in two volumes (217 and 193 pp.), in the Eve-Adam series, which also had a translation of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Eric Ruijssenaars

The Translations, a Statistical Analysis - Part Two, the Lists

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All the Brontë novels

It’s an exciting race for the top scorer competition of the amount of languages. Wuthering Heights has taken the lead, with 48 languages. Jane Eyre has 47. But there must be more. As a comparison Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland can be given. It has 174 languages. Jane Eyre especially, who is almost as iconic as Alice, should be able to come considerably closer. It is interesting to note that Jane Eyre took a 11-1 lead in the 19th century, against Wuthering Heights.

Villette is a very good third, with 31 languages.  On fourth place come The Professor and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, with 28. Shirley has 27. Agnes Grey is last, with 25. There will be more for them too.
One would think that the amount of translated editions of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley and Agnes Grey come close to the amount of The Professor (150). I would guess that there are at least about 2500 translated editions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, each.

In tables 8a-e you can see all the languages that have been found. The first two tables have the year in which the first translations of Villette and The Professor in a certain language was published.












Table 9 gives the full list of translations of Villette and The Professor since 1853.


1853-1872



1874-1944


1945-1957

1958-1971

1972-1980

1983-1992

1993-1999

2000-2005

2006-2010

2011-2014

2015-2016

Eric Ruijssenaars



Christmas Lunch and Entertainment 2016

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The annual Brontë Group Christmas Lunch took place last Saturday, 3 December. Around 40 members turned up to enjoy a three-course meal, drinks and entertainment. As usual, master of ceremonies Jones Hayden had planned a varied menu of entertainment.

Paul in his Christmas outfit!

Paul started by giving us a little bit of literary history. He read us Robert Southey's The Old Man's Comforts – and How He Gained Them, beginning 'You are old, Father William, the young man cried/The few locks which are left you are grey', followed by Lewis Carroll's much better-known parody of this worthy poem. Paul provided a hand-out in which we could compare John Tenniel's illustrations for the verses with Carroll's own. He also provided a Brontë link by reminding us of Southey's often-quoted words to the young Charlotte Brontë: 'Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be'.

Introduction by Helen

Fortified by the restaurant's starter as well as by Paul's entrée, we launched into the quiz prepared by Jones. Already the atmosphere was almost lifting the roof. It rose even further when we embarked on the main course and were given a rendering of Jane Eyre Abbreviated by John Crace, author of the Guardian's 'Digested Reads' column. Stella, Kate and Ola shared the reading of this irreverent version of Charlotte Brontë's best-seller. Much appreciated.

Jones guiding us along!

In between the main course and the dessert Jones guided us through the quiz answers. If we think that by now we know everything there is to know about the Brontës, we soon become aware that we don't!
Stella

Kate

Ola
After the dessert it was time for the raffles. There were wonderful book prizes: the Brontë Society's Celebrating Charlotte: Transforming Life into Literature in Jane Eyre (published this year), a lavishly illustrated book that links elements of the novel to Charlotte's real-life experience; The Brontës: a Life in Letters, Juliet Barker's selection of letters of the whole family, and John Sutherland's newly-published Brontë miscellany The Brontesaurus: An A-Z of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë (and Branwell). Also among the prizes was a framed print of one of Selena Busch's wonderful drawings recreating the Pensionnat. The lucky winners went home very happy.

Happy Brontë fans!
We ended the lunch by singing the traditional Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas.
After three and a half hours we ventured happily home through the darkening streets of Brussels. Yet another memorable Christmas lunch, giving us time to wish our Brontë friends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Looking forward to new events in 2017. The 200th anniversary of Branwell's birth will be on the programme. Hope to see you next year!


From All of Us to All of You!
Merry Christmas

and a

Happy New Year


Lisbeth/Helen

The Professor in French, part two

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Apart from the Swiss-French translation (of 1971) there are three other French translations of The Professor. By far the most successful one was done by Henriette Loreau. It is well possible that she began translating the novel in 1857, the year in which it was first published, posthumously. Loreau's Le Professeur was first published in 1858, by Hachette et Cie, from Paris (299 pp.). The last new edition so far of her translation dates from 2016! It brings her score to 158 years in the longest running translations competition, 64 years ahead of number 2. Henriette Loreau (1815-after 1883) also translated several Dickens novels and Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth, among other works.

Title page of the 1858 French
The Professor

This first edition has in recent years had two facsimile reprints, as print-on-demand books published by Reink Books (2014) and by Chapitre.com (year unknown).

The second edition was published in 1864, also by Hachette (and 299 pp.). It was like the first edition a copyrighted translation. "Traduit avec l'autorisation de l'éditeur" it says on the title pages. The 'editeur' is Smith, Elder & Co surely. It shows how much progress was made in a dozen years in international copyright matters, in a then very successful fight against pirate editions. Even though this 1864 edition especially may still have been an example of voluntary copyright. It's doubtful if the novel could have enjoyed an international copyright of more than 5 years in 1857.
A picture of the title page could not be found,

The third edition was published in 1867.

Cover of the 1867 French The Professor

Title page of the 1867 French The Professor
This 1867 edition was republished in facsimile this year, 2016, by Reink Books again (whom we also saw in the German The Professor article).


The next editions were published, by Hachette, in 1869, 1872, 1875 and 1878 (all 299 pp.).
Here are picture of the cover of the 1972 edition and the title page and opposite page of the 1875 edition. It is quite possible that the 1872 edition is the first one with a sort of modern cover. It does now mention that it is "Traduit avec l'autorisation de l'auteur" (whereas Charlotte of course never authorized a translation of The Professor as it was only published posthumously).

Cover of the 1872 French The Professor

Title page of the 1875 French The Professor
The eighth edition was published by Hachette in 1887 (still 299 pp.). It has quite the same cover as the 1872 edition. The main difference is the price. It had gone down from 1.25 francs to 1.

Cover of the 1887 French The Professor

In 1894 the ninth edition was published by Hachette (305 pp.). It has the same cover as the 1887 edition (with the same price). On the title page it still reads "Traduit avec l'autorisation de l'auteur."

Title page of the 1894 French The Professor

This edition was recently republished as a facsimile print-on-demand book by Chapitre.com. The exact year of it is not known though.

The tenth edition was published in 1933 by Gallimard from Paris (261 pp.).

Cover of the 1933 French The Professor

The first other translation, by J.J. Martin was published in 1945 by La Boétie from Bruxelles (277 pp.), which at around this time also published a translation of Villette.

Cover of the 1945 French The Professor

It was republished in 1947, with a different cover.

Cover of the 1947 French The Professor

The third translation of The Professor, by Henriette Tissier de Mallerais, was first published in 1946 by Nouvelles Ėditions Latines from Paris (287 pp.). She mostly translated from Spanish, and also did Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. This translation was republished in 1982 and 1989.

Cover of the 1946 French The Professor

Henriette Loreau had her eleventh edition in 1947, published this time by S.E.P.E. from Paris (204 pp.).

Cover of the 1947 S.E.P.E. French
The Professor
S.E.P.E. published a second edition, or twelfth, some time later, probably in or around 1949. It had a slightly different cover, in that the colour had turned from yellow into orange.


Cover of the second S.E.P.E. French
The Professor

In 1949 Gallimard published its second edition, Henriette Loreau’s thirteenth (261 pp.). The cover is the same as the 1933 Gallimard Le Professeur.


(To be continued)

Eric Ruijssenaars

The Professor in French, part three

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It took until 1971 before a new Le Professeur was published, a new translation by Janine Rebersat et Jacques Papy. It was described earlier in the Switzerland article.

The second edition of the Tissier de Mallerais translation was published in 1982, again by Nouvelles Ėditions Latines. The cover is almost the same as the original one from 1946, the amount of pages is the same.

Cover of the 1982 French
The Professor
Nouvelles Ėditions Latines republished it in 1989, with a different cover. They give it as the second edition, rather oddly. It also had 287 pages.

Cover of the 1989 French
The Professor
In its next edition Le Professeur, in the Rebersat and Papy translation, was in one book with Jane Eyre and La Châtelaine de Wildfell Hall. It was published by Robert Laffont from Paris in 1991 (941 pp.).


Cover of the 1991 French
The Professor/Jane Eyre/
Tenant of Wildfell Hall

In 1997 Gallimard published the fourteenth edition of the Loreau translation, in 2001 the fifteenth (both 318 pp.).

Cover of the 1997 French
The Professor


Cover of the 2001 French
The Professor

Loreau’s sixteenth edition was in a book together with translations of Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published by Gallimard in 2002 (1357 pp.).

Cover of the 2002 French
The Professor/Wuthering Heights/
Tenant of Wildfell Hall/Agnes Grey

In 2004 Laffont republished the book in which The Professor was combined with Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (960 pp. this time). It’s the third edition of the Rebersat and Papy translation.

Cover of the 2004 French The Professor/
Jane Eyre/Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(Painting: Frederick-Walker-Jane Eyre
and Rochester (ca. 1863)

A 119 years after its last edition Hachette published a new edition of Loreau’s translation in 2013 (306 pp.). It’s her seventeenth.

Cover of the 2013 French The Professor
The year 2014 saw a facsimile reprint of Loreau’s original work of 1858, published as a print-on-demand book by Reink Books. As well as one by Createspace, from the United States, although it’s unknown which old edition they used.

Cover of the 2014 French Createspace
The Professor
The twentieth edition of the Loreau translation was published in 2015, by Archipoche from Paris (301 pp.), with a preface by Catherine Rihoit. They published two more editions in 2016 (317 pp.). They have the same cover.

Cover of the 2015-6 Archipoche
French The Professors
This year also saw one more facsimile reprint of an old Loreau editions. Reink Books published, as a print-on-demand, the 1867 version. While Createspace had a version of their reprint with a somewhat different cover, the same quite dull one they used for their 2016 Finnish Villette. It doesn’t count as a new edition, being a print-on-demand book. They only count once. Thus we get to 23 editions for Henriette Loreau (equaling the Loisy/Telford French Villette translation). More surely will follow, in the coming years.

Cover of the 2016 French Createspace
The Professor

The other Brontë novels
The first novel to be published was Shirley. It was an adapted version – “imité de l’anglais par Old Nick” (P.E. Dauran Forgues). Old Nick later also did an imitation of Jane Eyre, after it had first appeared in 1854 as Jeanne Eyre, ou les Memoires d'une institutrice. The first French Agnes Grey was published in 1859, together with ShirleyWuthering Heights had to wait until 1892, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall until 1937.

Eric Ruijssenaars

The translations – Wuthering Heights on 61 languages, Jane Eyre on 59

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The amount of languages in which Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre have been translated has continued to expand. In the last updated version of the second translations analysis article of 24 November the score was 51-49. Emily Jane is still in the lead, still two ahead. Wuthering Heights is now on 61 languages, Jane Eyre on 59. (It’s a combined total of 67 languages.) In the revised article the new lists of languages can be seen.

There may be more languages in Asia and Africa for both that have not yet been discovered. And there will be new languages in upcoming years.

Cover of the The Wuthering Heights
in Bengali

Cover of the Jane Eyre in Afrikaans

Not all of the languages have got a full translation. The Jane Eyre in Afrikaans (a sort of Dutch from South Africa) is an abridged version for instance, of only 112 pages. The Basque Jane Eyre has only got 56. But abridged versions also count. I haven’t though included a 1943 Wuthering Heights play in Afrikaans. A play is not a translation.

On Wikipedia a list of mostly translated books can be found, billed as a ‘list of literary works by number of translations.’ They are not all literary works though, so the list has been cleansed. The Brontës are not in the Wikipedia list, but our revised literary list has Wuthering Heights in joint 16th place and Jane Eyre in joint 21st.

Top 22 of mostly translated literary works




Otherwise The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has scored two more languages, bringing the total to 30. One behind Villette. Shirley has 29 now, the Professor is still on 28. Agnes Grey has scored one more language, bringing her total to 26.

Cover of a Brazilian The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall

Eric Ruijssenaars

The Villette and The Professor Translations – New Acquisitions

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In the last few months more translated editions of Villette and The Professor have been published. And recently two more Villettes were announced to be published in a few months time. These new acquisitions will be presented here, as well as an update on the statistical figures, showing what a successful year 2016 has been. It is for instance the best ever year for The Professor, with 12 editions so far.

A few months ago, at about the time the Brazil article was published, a second Brazilian 2016 Villette was published by Marin Claret from São Paulo. It was translated by Solange Pinheiro (856 pp.). She has also translated Wuthering Heights.

Cover of the second 2016 Brazilian
Villette

Back cover of the second 2016
Brazilian Villette

The pretty attractive cover is based on a photograph of the Pensionnat, taken in 1910, shortly before its demolition. It features the so-called Gallery which wasn’t there in the years Charlotte and Emily stayed at the Pensionnat. The big building in the  background also wasn’t there. It’s a brand new office building.


At about the time the article about Finland and other Nordic countries was posted a new Finnish The Professor was published. It’s a second edition of the translation of Inkeri Koskinen, again published by Tammi. It has the same amount of pages (331), but a different, fairly dull, cover.


Cover of the 2016 Finnish
The Professor

Another acquisition to the collection is a picture of the previously unknown 1975 French Hubeau translation cover. The edition was described in the third French Villette article. It will though probably have had a still missing illustrated book jacket.



Since the first statistical analysis article was first published more translations of the Brussels novels have been found, so it had to be updated a few times. One or two mistakes were found in the list of all editions, and a few new editions were found when writing about the French translations. The tables have now been updated again. The list of all translated editions of Villette and The Professor in the second statistical analysis article has also been updated.

The year 2013 is still the best year, with 20 translated edtions of both novels. The year 2016 is now solely on second place, with 16, 1 ahead of 2014. The present decade is, after a mere six years, already the best decade for both of the novels. Two editions that have only been announced yet give 2011-2017 the Villette lead. It brings the score to 37 editions, against 35 for the previous decade. The present decade has a The Professor lead of 10, with 52 editions already, against 42 for 2001-2010.

2017
Earlier the Brazilian publisher Pedrazul had already announced a new translation of The Professor which is to be published this new year. Now two 2017 forthcoming editions of Villette can be added. They give this new year a good start. It would be a surprise if 2017 doesn’t get to 10 editions at least.

The Danish publisher Gyldendal from Kopenhagen has announced it will publish a Villette on the 1st of March. It is probably a new translation, and not yet known who did the translation. It is an abridged version, with 350 pages only.  The cover is also not yet known.

In April a new Finnish Villette will be published, by WSOY which published the first six Finnish Villette editions between 1921 and 1966 (500 pp.). It will surely be the old Tyyni Haapanen-Taalgren translation, first published in 1921. It will get her thus to a 96 years stretch, 22 years ahead of the second most successful translation of Villette, in terms of years.

The new acquisitions bring the total score for Villette to 218 translated editions and for The Professor to 170, and their total to 388. In about a year’s time we should reach the 400 mark. Hopefully we will then also have been able to add one or two more languages.

Below you will find a list of links to all the countries or languages which have hitherto been researched.


Belgium III, Dutch II

































Still to come are Turkey, Iran, Korea, China and Japan. 

Eric Ruijssenaars

A Celebration of Anne Brontë

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Anne Brontë was born on 17 January 1820. To commemorate her birthday Eric has collected a few covers of her books.

Czechia, 1975

Finland, 1971


Latvia, 2014

Spain, 1951

Switzerland, 1947

Eric Ruijssenaars

Villette and The Professor in Turkish

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Turkey is unique in having, albeit abridged, both Villette and The Professor in one book, published in 1958 (410 pp.).  There were actually two editions of this work, published by Türkiye Yayınevi from Istanbul. This translation was done by Sayhan Bilbasar (1915-1999).
It is interesting that the jacket covers only give the The Professor title, Sevdiğim Adam, which translates as Favorite man. The book covers also give the Villette title, Istirap Yillary, or A Year of Suffering. One edition has a green cover, the other a reddish one. It’s not known which was published first.

Cover of the book jacket of the first
Turkish 1958 The Professor/Villette



The book cover of the first Turkish
1958 The Professor/Villette



The second 1958 edition was only discovered recently, which is why it got that rank. It means that both novels gained another translated edition (in comparison to the last published update of 6 January, raising the scores to 219 for Villette and 171 for The Professor and their total to 390. The 100th translated edition was published one year later, in 1959, the 200th in 1995, the 300th in 2010. It is likely we’ll get to 400 at the end of this year.

Cover of the second Turkish 1958
The Professor/Villette


The first complete translation of Villette was published in 2011 by Kırmızı Kedi from Istanbul (560 pp.). The title was Geçmişin Gölgesinde, which translates as History in the shadow. This translation was done by Nevhiz Aksunkur (1952-). A second edition, with the same cover, was published in 2013 (552 pp.).

Cover of the 2011/2013 Turkish Villette


The Professor
The second Turkish The Professor was published in 2001, a full translation by Gamze Varim (293 pp.). It was published by Oğlak from Istanbul.

Cover of the 2001 Turkish
The Professor

The third translation, by Elif Yıldırım, was published in 2012 by Oda from Istanbul (269 pp.). Yildirim has also translated works from Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Mary Shelley and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as French literary and German philosophical works. She also wrote a few books herself.

Cover of the 2012 Turkish
The Professor

The Varim translation was republished in 2013 by Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür from Istanbul (329 pp.).

Cover of the 2013 Turkish
 The Professor

Some English editions of The Professor have also been published in Turkey.

The other Brontë novels
Wuthering Heights was the first to be translated and published, in 1942. Jane Eyre followed in 1945, Shirley in 1955, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1968 and Agnes Grey in 1970.

Other Turkish languages
So far only two translated editions have been published, or found at least, for the Turkish languages of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Both Azerbaijan and Tajikistan have a Jane Eyre. More editions of this novel have been found in these countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union, notably in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, but these are Russian translations. It’s quite likely we’ll see more Brontë translations from these countries in the coming years.

Eric Ruijssenaars

Villette and The Professor in Iran

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Villette
The first Villette translated in Persian (or Farsi; as far as I could gather) was published in 1992 by Insight (474 pp.). The translation was done by Farida Timurid. She also translated Shirley. The second edition was published in 1993. The covers couldn’t be found unfortunately.
The third, fourth and fifth editions were published in 2011, 2012 (probably) and 2013 respectively, by Secretary Press (486 pp.). They have the same cover. Only the year of the fourth has been given, 1390, which corresponds with March 2011 to March 2012. The third edition is from January 2011, the fifth from March 2013, so it seems fair to assume the fourth will be from about halfway between.

Cover of the 2011, 2012 and 2013
Iranian Villette


These five editions were only discovered recently. It means that the total number of translated editions of Villette increases to 224, and the total number for Villette and The Professor together to 395. It seems well possible that we’ll get to 400 in the spring. It also means that the first Persian Villette (as far as I know now) was published 21 years earlier than I previously thought.

The second translation was published in 2014, just. Its precise publication date is given as the 15th of the 10th (moon) month of the year 1392, which is 5 January 2014. Earlier, in the list of all translated editions, the book was erroneously given as from 2013. This Villette was published by Reed and translated by Reza Rezaee (711 pp.). He has done more Brontë novels, as well as all Jane Austen and a few George Eliot novels.


Cover of the 2014 Iranian Villette


There are two versions of this edition. The other one has a brownish color. At the same time this translation also appeared as an audiobook.

Cover of the 2014 Iranian Villette audiobook


A second translation, by Marzieh Khosravi, was published in Teheran in (April) 2015 (672 pp.), the publisher’s name translates as Day or Days. She has translated many works, also from French and other languages, including Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Again the title reflects the sound of Villette - Google translate gives it as ‘Willett.’

Cover of the 2015 Iranian Villette


The Professor
The first Persian translation of The Professor was published in 2013 by Jami (344 pp.). It was translated by Esmaeil Kayvani.

Cover of the 2013 Iranian
The Professor


The second translation was published on the same date as the first Villette, 5 January 2014. This was also a translation by Reza Rezaee and published by Reed (343 pp.). This edition has previously been attributed to 2015 in the list of all translated editions, which each time gets outdated soon.

Cover of the 2014 Iranian
The Professor

The third translation, by J. Violet, was published in 2015 by Day (364 pp.).

Cover of the 2015 Iranian
The Professor


The other Brontë novels
Apart from Villette and The Professor Reza Rezaee has also translated Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Marzieh Khosrain has, apart from Villette, also translated Shirley. Jane Eyre has had at least six different translations, Wuthering Heights at least five. The amount of translations is quite impressive.

All this means that 2013 has lost and gained a translated edition, 2015 lost one, and 2011, 2012 and 2014 gained one. The new scores for the top three years are 20 for 2013 (9 V + 11 TP), 17 (6 + 11) for 2014 and 15 (5 + 10) for 2016. The year 2011 is now on second  place for Villette with 8 editions.


Eric Ruijssenaars

P.S. As always we would love to hear from people from the countries described in this series, about personal recollections of the translated editions, and additions, even more so now the languages are getting difficult. It would be very interesting to learn more about the popularity of the Brontës in Iran, and all the other countries.
So do leave a comment or write to me, ericruijssenaars@hotmail.com

Villette and The Professor in Korean

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The first Korean Villette was published in 1996, in a translation by Joel Lee. It was published by Ch'angjak kwa Pip'yŏngsa from Seoul. The title gives the sound of Villette, Pillett'ŭ in a transcription. The second translation’s title in transcription is Billette. This work was published in two volumes, of 270 and 218 pages. The covers were identical (apart from nrs. 1 and 2).

Cover of the 1996 Korean Villette

The second translation was published in 2010, in the ‘World Masterpieces Series’ (nrs. 28 and 29), by the Contemporary Culture Center from Goyang. Quite a number of the translated editions we have seen were published in some such sort of series. The translation was done by Lee Ningjin (I’m not entirely sure about this name and some others). It was again a work in two volumes (392 and 384 pages), with identical covers, apart from the numbers.

Cover of the .. volume of the
2010 Korean Villette
(Koreaans1)

Previously I had assumed that this book,

Cover of a 2015 Korean Villette

was a third translated Korean edition. On closer inspection though the text turns out to be in English. It means that Villette and 2015 lose an edition.

The one and only translation of The Professor, by Bae Mi-Young was published in 2009 by Sponsorship Books (365 pp.), in the ‘Open Books World Literature’ series (nr. 96).

Cover of the 2005 Korean
The Professor


The other Brontë novels
Wuthering Heights was the first to be translated, its Korean version was published in 1959. Jane Eyre first appeared in 1961. Agnes Grey appears to be the only other novel to have been translated.
It was published in 2007.


Eric Ruijssenaars

The Translations of the Brontë Devoirs

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When at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, Charlotte and Emily Brontë wrote quite a lot of essays, or devoirs, at the instruction of Monsieur Heger, in French. These compositions are not only an important part of the legacy of their time in Brussels, they are also “a crucial link between the juvenilia and the novels,” as Sue Lonoff put it in her The Belgian Essays, published in 1996 by Yale.
For the first time the texts of all the known manuscripts were published, also in English translations.
Previously, some could be found in Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë; Fannie Ratchford's and Loraine White Nagel's Emily Brontë. Five Essays Written in French; Enid Duthie's The Foreign Vision of Charlotte Brontë, and several articles in Brontë Studies Transactions.

At the time, Lonoff gives the number of 30 devoirs known to have existed, written by at least one of the sisters, with two of them being lost. In 2012 Charlotte’s L’Amour filial devoir turned up, found in a private library. A devoir with that title written by Emily was already known. On top of that, Brian Bracken discovered Charlotte’s L’Ingratude in 2011. It was one of the two missing devoirs.


There are bound to have been more manuscripts than the ones now known, originally. “Of the extant essays,” Lonoff wrote, “ten are clear copies, eight have been corrected lightly, and nine bear signs of heavy intervention. There are also four revised drafts, two with his corrections and two, mailed to Gaskell, in his handwriting.” Given this, it seems fair to assume that there will originally have been three manuscripts per devoir, on average at least. There are four manuscripts by Charlotte from 1843 that may not be devoirs, of which thus only one manuscript ever existed. With these 4, the 27 known devoirs (27 x 3 = 81 manuscripts) and the four extras we get to a minimum of 89 manuscripts that have existed. It is likely that there will have been at least one or two more devoirs. Thus it would amount to more than 90 manuscripts. At present we have, it seems, a bit more than a third, 35 manuscripts. The number of titles is 27. Four of these were done by both sisters.
Most of the missing manuscripts will never turn up, but it must be only a matter of time before one will be discovered again. It seems possible that in the end we can get to 40 manuscripts, many years from now.

Cover of the 1996 Belgian Essays

Earlier, in 1990, a Japanese edition was published, with translations of (for that time an impressive amount of) 19 devoirs (298 pp.). The work was edited and translated by Hiroshi Nakaoka, and published by Kaibunnsha Shuppan from Tokyo, in 1990. The title translates as "Bronte Sister's Study Abroad Era."

Cover of the 1990 Japanese devoirs edition
(front cover on the left)

In 2002 Emily’s devoirs were published in Italian by Ripostes from Salerno, translated by Maddalena de Leo (85 pp.).

Cover of the 2002 Italian Emily Bronte.
Componimenti in Francese


The next editions were not translations. Emily had six of her devoirs again published in French by Mille et Une Nuits in 2008. The booklet was edited by Augustin Trapenard (64 pp.).

Cover of the 2008 French
Devoirs de Bruxelles

In 2013 a new French edition, Le Palais de la Mort,  was published by Hermann from Paris. It was edited by Sue Lonoff de Cuevas herself. The book contains 13 devoirs written by both Emily and Charlotte, including the newly discovered L’Ingratitude (88 pp.).

Cover of the 2013 French
Le Palais de la Mort
(Painting (detail): Arnold Böcklin - Isle
of the  Dead (5th version, 1886))

A Japanese translation of Lonoff’s work was published in the summer of 2016 by Sairyusha (752 pp.). The translation was done by Hiroshi Nakaoka, who did the 1990 edition, and Ashizawa Hisae. The book sadly doesn’t have the two devoirs that were discovered some years ago.


Cover of the 2016 Japanese Belgian Essays

At the end of 2016 an Italian edition was published. It’s unique in having all thirty devoirs. They were translated by Maddalena de Leo, who wrote the following text:
 “I componimenti di Bruxelles have been finally published by the Italian publisher Ripostes in this month of December (123 pp.). In this book I’ve collected and translated in Italian all the French devoirs by Charlotte Brontë, written during her stay as a student -with her sister Emily- at the Pensionnat in Brussels, in 1842. I had already translated and published Emily’s devoirs in 2002 and now, by working on Charlotte’s unknown ones, my intention was to complete what at the time was an innovative work. Unlike Emily, Charlotte went back to Belgium in 1843, became an English teacher, and took more French lessons from Heger, writing for him new compositions.
My translation was based on Sue Lonoff ‘s work. To her I owe a great debt of gratitude for her punctual and clever work. The “devoirs” are thirty in total – twenty-one written by Charlotte and nine by Emily -, and in my book they are all preceded by an explicative introduction by me. The topics are varied, from British history to Greek history and the Bible - by reading them it is easy to understand Charlotte’s religious culture. Emily’s are far superior and almost some pearls of her thought.
My hope is that this new and complete work can be an addition to the Italian knowledge of these surprising English writers to whom I have dedicated my life.”


Cover of the 2016 Italian
I componimenti di Bruxelles



The cover picture is a slightly adapted version of a Brontë Christmas postcard with a drawing of Rosalind Wicks (with the Haworth Parsonage and the nearby church in the background).

Postcard drawing by Rosalind Wicks

Eric Ruijssenaars
(with thanks to Akiko Higuchi, her son, and Sue Lonoff)

Brussels Brontë Group, talks on "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights"

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Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were the subjects of a day of talks by members of the Brussels Brontë Group on 11 February. It was a tradi-tionally rainy Saturday in February, and members of the Brussels Brontё Group sought refuge in the rich world of complicated women and windswept landscapes to hear two more fascinating talks from the group members.

In the morning, Judith Collins walked us through Disguise, deception and concealment in Jane Eyre. Her inspiration for this topic were the two scenes when Rochester dresses up, first in the charades and then as the gypsy-woman. She says: “it occurred to me that although these were literal disguises, that is, he changed his clothes so that he wouldn’t be recognised, there were other sorts of disguises in the novel.”


Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester

Indeed, Judith focused  on three levels of disguises employed by Rochester: dressing up physically, covering up his feelings for Jane until he knew they were returned and, most importantly and cunningly, his predicament of being previously married. She made a strong point about Rochester’s disguise being about subverting and distorting the truth or simply lying, as opposed to concealment, which “just” implies not revealing the entire truth, which was more Jane’s case.

Paul Gretton talking on Wuthering Heights

The analysis was interspersed with readings of crucial scenes between the novel’s central couple, expertly re-enacted by Group members Kate and Paul (who was evidently practicing for his own talk later that day). Through evoking and analysing these extracts, Judith showed that as their relationship developed and gained momentum, Rochester was removing the layers of his disguise gradually and very carefully. He only came clean to Jane after a confrontation with Mason on the failed wedding day forced him into a corner. Only then did they become equal in terms of knowledge, even if they remained separated morally. Before this happened, in the process of revealing himself, Rochester continually manipulated the information as well as its recipients. He willingly misled Jane into believing that the night fires were caused by Grace Poole (since he’s still covering up the existence of Bertha) or that he was honestly courting Blanche Ingram (since his feelings for Jane are still under disguise).

Even the physical disguise was related to what lay hidden deeper – Rochester attempted to elicit a declaration of love from Jane, but with his elaborate schemes only managed to force her deeper into hiding. Blanche Ingram, even though not the intended target, also ended up confused and misled by his machinations and cryptic communication. As Judith concluded, “although the charades and the gypsy scene are ostensibly physical disguise, during the course of events the reader gains a partial insight into Rochester’s disguised emotions, and also of Rochester’s predicament”.

Ian McShane as Heathcliff

After an extended lunch break, we were treated to some more animated readings from Paul Gretton, illustrating his own talk on  the subject of Literary themes and sources in Wuthering Heights: The Disruptive Intruder, The Fascinating Baddie, The Star-crossed Lovers, Digging up your Girlfriend ... (as one does) .

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(Wikipedia)
These declamations included Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Grendel and the Green Knight respectively embodied the figure of a “Disruptive Intruder”: someone visibly different, albeit described vaguely enough to remain a mystery. Someone who enters a well-established, prosperous society or group, to introduce an element of uncertainty, otherness, and, as a consequence, suspense. Apparently Emily Brontё wouldn’t have had the chance to read either of those texts and use them as inspiration for her peculiar novel, but the topos surely had appeared in other literary sources, like Paradise Lost or Shakespeare’s plays to name just a few. Heathcliff seems just that kind of an intruder: dark, mysterious and foreign, initially he even communicates in a language that cannot be understood. And much like other Disruptive Intruders in the literary canon, he also instigates all the action.

There is a myriad of other popular topics making an appearance in the novel, including “The Fascinating Baddie” in the vein of Macbeth, Richard III, The Giaour and again Paradise Lost, and the “Star Crossed Lovers”, or illicit love leading to disaster of Romeo and Juliet and Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

But the second theme Paul chose to illustrate in more detail was “Digging up One’s Girlfriend”. In the time of the Brontёs, this would have been a particularly relevant leitmotif, linked to the practice of resurrectionism, or digging up the bodies from fresh graves and delivering them to surgeons for practice. Paul also pointed out that Victorians had a vivid interest in death, with their death masks, death photography, taxidermy, and elaborate cemetery architecture among others. Digging up a loved one’s corpse would be a typically gothic element in the story, but it would also be circumscribed in a broader tradition of love transcending death (think Orpheus and Eurydice) and lovers united in death (think Tristan and Isolde) in literature as well as opera. German romantics, such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Heine and Richard Wagner, used this source of inspiration. But possibly the most immediate example known to Emily could have been the story of The Bridegroom of Barna, published in the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (known to be read at the Parsonage) in November 1840.  This exuberantly entertaining story included all the main tropes, complete with a cursed suitor rejected by the maiden’s family, a window scene between the star-crossed lovers, death by heartbreak and dramatic scene at the graveyard with the grieving lover clasping his bride’s corpse in his arms (and then falling dead into her grave).

Paul has provided us with more background information on his topic. Click hereto access the document.

Ola Podstawka

House (with Brontë connection) for sale !

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Some of you may remember that two years ago (in 2015) I reported on our detective work during our annual holidays in Ireland, more in particular regarding a Brontë-related house, i.e. Kill House near Clifden, in the Connemara, Co. Galway, Ireland. This is the house where Arthur Bell Nicholls’ cousin, Harriette Bell, lived with her husband, John Evans Adamson, and their children. Harriette was the cousin Arthur proposed to in 1851 and who declined his proposal.

In 2015, we found the house while driving around in  the Connemara with only vague information on its exact location. As the house was in private ownership, we could not view the inside. We only saw the house from the gate (as shown below).

                                 



My husband Paul, who is becoming a real “Brontë-detective”, has now discovered some exciting news:  Kill House seems to be on the market for sale.

The publication by the estate agent gives some detailed information on the history, the remarkable connections and the interior of the house.  The name “Kill House” derives from an ancient and very large area called “Kill” which means “church” in Gaelic. This could also suggest that an important ecclesiastical community could have existed in this area. Indeed, the ruins of a small and very old church are still visible underneath the ivy.


The house as it appears today, was built in 1861 by John Evans Adamson after he acquired Kill Cottage and Kill estate with 200 acres of land in 1854. In that year John married Harriette Bell (daughter of Alan and Harriette Lucinda (Adamson) Bell from Banagher). John and Harriette were distant cousins. Together they had seven children.

The original Kill cottage was a small stone house, and became very cramped for the expanding family. So a larger home was required. The new house was completed in 1861 and had become a stately mansion. It was built entirely of stone and contained ten large rooms.

John died in 1869 at the early age of 47. His wife Harriette was unable to cope with the hard work at the Kill estate. So she decided to leave Connemara and go back to Banagher to live with her relatives. Kill estate was finally sold to a captain Thompson.

According to the information from the estate agent, the house has been renovated and restored sensitively and meticulously  with major attention being given  to maintaining as much as possible of the original features and the historical architectural details. That is why many authentic features dating back to the origin of Kill House have been preserved. The majestic staircase, many floors, most of the doors including their locks, the roof structure and some of the historic sash windows have survived and are still in place. Almost all historical casement shutters are also still existent and fully working (which is a rare detail in historic houses in these days).

The house itself is situated right on the edge of the Sky Road as part of the famous Wild Atlantic way, and, surrounded by beautiful mature gardens, natural stone walls, well-maintained hedgerows and a walled gated entrance, is “a haven of privacy  and serenity with magnificent, magical and unspoilt views in every direction of the Connemara mountains and sea”.

In our (= Paul’s and mine) opinion, an ideal location for our holiday retreat:  Fishing nearby and the Brontë spirit still lingering!

Source: property.ie

I was very excited when I saw the lovely  pictures from inside and outside the house.  As we are going back to the area this year, we might just try to view the house via the estate agent. With a bit of Irish luck, we might just succeed.

If only I had won the Lottery or Euromillions, I would certainly be tempted to make an offer immediately!

For the moment, I just keep dreaming…….

Marina Saegerman


Villette and The Professor in Japan

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There have been six editions of Villette and The Professor in Japanese, three of each. They were all published in a ‘complete works of the Brontës’ series. The first Villette was published in 1952, by David-sha which also published the first The Professor in 1954. Both were translations done by Jiro Sagara. In 1951 he also did Shirley. The Villette consisted of three volumes, of 232, 278 and 208 pages. Its Japanese subtitle, apart from a Villette transcription, was ‘A Note of a Solitary Soul.’ The Professor had 199 pages.


The second ‘complete works’ series was published in 1993, by Bunsendo-Shuppan. The Jiro Sagara translations were used again. The amounts of pages remained the same. Of these works only the cover of the 1954 The Professor could be found (so far). It is the first and only translated edition of either of the Brussels novels that was published that year. It means that, since 1942, only the years 1981 and 1988 do not have a translated edition.

Cover of the 1954 Japanese The Professor

The 1993 Villette was previously unknown to me. The 1954 The Professor was forgotten in my list of translated editions, as the year of publication wasn’t entirely clear. It raises the total amount from 394 to 396. Because three new Italian editions have been found recently (about which later), the new total is 399.

The third series was published in 1995-1997 by Misuzu-shobo (12 volumes). The Villette (vols. 5 and 6; 418 and 405 pp.) was translated by Seiko Aoyama (1931-). An interview with her, in which she also talks about this translation, was published in Brontë Society Transactions of October 2000. She wrote two articles about Charlotte Brontë and Brussels, published in 1966 and 1989.

Cover of the first volume of
the 1995 Japanese Villette

The translation of The Professor was done by Hiroshi Ebine. It was also published in 1995, and was volume 1 of the series (439 pp.). This book also has translations of Emma and Willie Ellin.

Cover of the first volume of
the 1995 Japanese The Professor


The other Brontë novels
The oldest Japanese Jane Eyre appears to date from 1928. A copy of it is in, remarkably, the Danish Royal Library, and not in the National Diet Library of Japan. The first Japanese Wuthering Heights was published in 1936. Shirley followed in 1951, while Anne (despite the ‘complete works’ titles of the early 1950s and 1993 series) had to wait until 1995 before her Agnes Grey was translated and published, and 1996 before The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published.

A Villette connection
Akiko Higuchi, the renowned Japanese scholar and translator, has the following story about the namesake of a Villette personage:

“Monsieur Christoph de Basssompièrre and his family stayed in Japan as Minister-Counsellor at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium from 2013 to July 2016. I met him four times at the Belgian Embassy, and he had given me very nice letters about Leonie de Bassompièrre, his great-great-grand aunt connected with the Brontë sisters at the Pensionnat Heger. The favourable name of “Louise de Bassompièrre” in Villette must have come from the friendship with a Bassompièrre link. Besides, his great grandfather, Albert de Bassompièrre, was the first ambassador to Japan for 19 years; his son was very familiar with Japan, staying with his parents in Japan. M. Christophe de Bassompièrre is the fourth generation as a diplomat. He left Japan in July 2016 and hopefully now he stays in Brussels. I contributed an essay, “A Bassompièrre link restored” in the Gazette of the Bronte Society, Issue 64, September 2014. I also contributed about him in the Bronte Newsletter of Japan, No. 90, 1 April, 2015.”

Akiko Higuchi wrote The Brontës and Music, in 2 volumes (Yushodo Press, 2008), which has a lot about Brussels. Earlier her article about the ‘Concert at the Fête in Villette’ was published in the Transactions of 1992. Among the works she translated are Mr Charlotte Brontë: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls (Tokyo 2015) and Jolien Janzing’s De Meester (to be published as an e-book).

Eric Ruijssenaars
(With thanks too to Miwa Uhara, Secretary of the Brontë Society of Japan)


Book signing by author Helen MacEwan

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On Sunday 12 March Helen will be signing her book Les Soeurs Brontë à Bruxelles, published by CFC-Éditions. It takes place at the bookfair in Tours et Taxi. 

You will find her at ‘Espace Livres et Création’, stand no. 230 from 16.00 to 17.00. 

Let any francophone friends know who might be interested, and if you’re at the fair that afternoon, do go and say hello to Helen!





10 top tips from the Guardian's Brussels correspondent

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We are happy to read that the Brontës have ended up on a list of top 10 tips what to do in Brussels. There is also a reference to our guided tours. Here is what they say.

Discover old Brussels, Brontë style
Charlotte Brontë was famously rude about Belgium, after living in Brussels for a couple of years from 1842. But don’t let that put you off the Brussels Brontë society’s fascinating walking tours, which offer a window into a vanished world. In a couple of hours you can unlock a few secrets, from a hidden bust of Peter the Great, which marks the spot where the drunken tsar fell off a fountain, to the long-demolished boarding school where Charlotte lived, worked and dreamed up novels. Check online for dates. Tours (around €10pp) may be possible for groups of 10 or more. 
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For more tips what to do and see in Brussels have a look at the Guardian's article.

Enjoy!


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