Realms of mental wealth

• Published in: TLS. Times literary supplement (1969) 2014-05 (5796), p.13-16
• Main Author: Lesser, Margaret
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0307-661X

This commentary examines the translation work of William (1792-1879) and Mary Howitt (1799-1888), in particular as pioneers in the translation of Scandinavian literature, which was then relatively unchartered territory. The Howitt's were a rare example of a literary couple who worked an equal footing, sometimes collaborating, sometimes pursuing different project side by side. They had not started out with any ideas of being translators; their aim had been to satisfy their own creative urges while at the same time bringing pleasure and enlightenment to the deprived classes. They were, in short, simultaneously professional writers and dedicated radicals, active against slavery and all forms of cruelty, and equally active for universal education, women's rights and religious tolerance. In both areas, literary and radical, they came to be well known and, on the whole, respected. They moved to Germany in the 1840s and did much to introduce German literature to English-speaking readers, but they were to have their greatest success at this time with a writer who was not German but Swedish, the novelist Fredrika Bremer. From this chance beginning Scandinavia became the Howitt's accredited speciality and word soon reached them of a captivating Dane called Hans Christian Anderson. But there were other Scandinavian authors to be revealed to British readers, with Emilie Flygare-Carlén and Sophie von Knorring, Mary was capitalising on the new interest in Swedish female novelists aroused by Bremer. In 1850 the Howitts had embarked together on a pioneering "complete history of the literature of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, from the sagas to the present day"; it eventually amounted to over forty chapters and contained many long excerpts - translated by the Howitts - from the writings described. Erratic as they were, the Howitts had done much to put Scandinavia on the literary map, as it was seen by Anglo-Saxons in the middle of the nineteenth century. (Quotes from original text)