Showing posts with label Aleksandr Herzen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aleksandr Herzen. Show all posts

Saturday, January 12, 2019

The Garnett Family (2): In Defence of Constance



There's a fascinating passage in David Garnett's autobiography The Golden Echo (1953), where he describes how his mother set about her translations from the Russian:
Constance used to get up by half-past six or seven in the spring and summer, and we soon sat down to our breakfast of porridge, with milk for me and coffee for her. Her day contained so much that I cannot easily fit it all in. First thing in the morning she used to go round the garden, while the dew was still on the plants, and collect those miscreants, the slugs. This was a moment of self-indulgence, for the serious day's work was still before her. Some of the housework had to be done, then I was called in and my lessons started and, leaving me to work out a sum or to learn a proposition of Euclid, Constance would open the Russian volume which she was translating and begin work. Sometimes, but not always, I would work in the same room with her and, letting my pencil lie idle on the paper, I would watch the changing expressions on her face, eager, frowning, puzzled or amused. The Russian words were translated not only on the foolscap piece of paper in front of her, but into English features and flesh and blood. Her face was so expressive that I could guess at the emotional tension of what she was reading. Even if I did not interrupt, there would soon be a knocking at the back door, or Edward would come in with a letter in his hand, worried until he could read it to her and work off his irritation by a discussion. [53-54]
Given that she translated so much: the collected works of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Turgenev, together with substantial amounts of Tolstoy, Herzen and sundry others (NB: I've supplied a complete list at the end of this post), and that it's all now in the public domain, the merits of Constance Garnett's translations from the Russian continue to attract controversy.



Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)


Principal among her critics was Vladimir Nabokov, who described her versions as "dry and flat, and always unbearably demure." Poet Josef Brodsky went further, saying:
The reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren’t reading the prose of either one. They’re reading Constance Garnett.
It's worth noting, however, that Nabokov also believed that the ideal translator should always be a man, and that his own translations - the four-volume Eugene Onegin, for instance - have hardly attracted universal acclaim.



Aleksandr Pushkin: Eugene Onegin, trans. Vladimir Nabokov (1964)


Was she inaccurate? At times, it seems, yes - especially at first. She began working on Russian in the mid-1890s and kept going until the 1930s. The jewel in her crown is undoubtedly her massive edition of Chekhov (17 volumes: 1916-26). It would be no exaggeration to compare the influence of this work to that of Scott-Moncrieff's pioneering versions of Proust (1922-30). It gifted the English-speaking world with an entirely new conception of the short story, just as Proust revolutionised contemporary notions of the novel.

David Remnick's 2005 New Yorker article "The Translation Wars" gives something of the atmosphere of that discovery:
In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway recounts scouring Sylvia Beach’s shelves for the Russians and finding in them a depth and accomplishment he had never known. Before that, he writes, he was told that Katherine Mansfield was “a good short-story writer, even a great short-story writer,” but now, after reading Chekhov, she seemed to him like “near-beer.” To read the Russians, he said, “was like having a great treasure given to you”.
Close family friend D. H. Lawrence recalled her:
sitting out in the garden turning out reams of her marvelous translations from the Russian. She would finish a page, and throw it off on a pile on the floor without looking up, and start a new page. That pile would be this high — really, almost up to her knees, and all magical.
The inaccuracies have been exaggerated, too (often by rival translators, hoping to find a market for their own new version of some classic novel or other). Donald Rayfield, in his Chekhov Omnibus (1994):
compared Garnett's translations with the most recent scholarly versions of Chekhov's stories and concluded: "While she makes elementary blunders, her care in unravelling difficult syntactical knots and her research on the right terms for Chekhov's many plants, birds and fish are impressive.... Her English is not only nearly contemporaneous to Chekhov's, it is often comparable."


Feliks Volkhovsky (1846-1914)


That's not to say that accuracy is unimportant, but it's important to note that Garnett did not work alone. Taught Russian, initially, by Russian exile Feliks Volkhovsky (pictured above), she subsequently worked with his colleague Sergius Stepniak (below) on her first translations - of Goncharov and Tolstoy - both published in 1894.



Soon afterwards she made a trip to Russia - a journey described in loving detail in David Garnett's The Golden Echo. She met Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, but was forced to turn down his offer of more of his works to translate as she'd already made a start on her massive edition of Turgenev.

After Stepniak died in 1895, his wife Fanny worked with Garnett on her translations. From 1906 onwards, however, she was replaced by Natalie Duddington, daughter of esteemed Russian novelist Alexander Ivanovich Ertel, whom she met in Russia and in whom she found "real intellectual companionship" (as her grandson Richard Garnett reveals in his 1991 biography Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life, 251).



Natalie Duddington, trans.: Russian Folk Tales (1969)


Another important thing to remember about translation in general is that the texture of the translator's prose is probably more important in creating an impression on the reader than the actual literal accuracy of each phrase. The latest translation of a book is not necessarily the best. I recently had the experience of reading a new translation of Bulgakov's classic novel The Master and Margarita, which advertised itself as "complete and unexpurgated" - inlcluding numerous passages previously suppressed - and generally a great improvement on the earlier versions:



Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1940)


Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. 1938. Trans. Michael Glenny. London: Collins Clear-Type Press / The Harvill Press, 1967.

Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. 1929-40. Trans. Diana Burgin & Katherine Tiernan O'Connor. Annotations and Afterword by Ellendea Proffer. 1995. Vintage International. New York: Random House, Inc., 1996.
It was virtually unreadable! So cloth-eared was the prose, so clunky the annotation, that if I hadn't already encountered the novel in Michael Glenny's smooth and delightful version, I would have concluded that Bulgakov was massively overrated!

Moreover, when Constance Garnett put out a translation, it fell instantly into the hands of the likes of D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and the entire Bloomsbury set. Was her diction overly "demure," as Nabokov claims? Not in their eyes. And this was, arguably, the best period in history for stylish English prose.

As Rayfield comments above, and it's a point worth stressing: "Her English is not only nearly contemporaneous to Chekhov's, it is often comparable." Constance Garnett is the closest thing we can get to a contemporary window on Chekhov - and the same applies to Tolstoy, too (though less so, admittedly, to Gogol and Dostoevsky, where her temperamental affinities are more strained).

Coming back to Hemingway, his verdict on the cumulative effect of those of her translations he read was as follows:



Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast (1964)


In Dostoevsky there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know as you knew the landscape and the roads in Turgenev, and the movement of troops, the terrain and the officers and the men and the fighting in Tolstoy. Tolstoy made the writing of Stephen Crane on the Civil War seem like the brilliant imagining of a sick boy who had never seen war but had only read the battles and chronicles and seen the Brady photographs that I had read and seen at my grandparents’ house.
That's not to say that new versions of these classic texts should not continue to appear. That would be quixotic in the extreme. But the credentials of the translators as prose writers need to be as impressive as their command of the language they're translating from. There's always a need for good, accurate cribs for students to use, but to compose a new version of a great book requires real literary skills. These don't come ready-made.

And neither is it always possible to trust the verdicts of native speakers of the translated language. Nabokov and Brodsky were no doubt correct in thinking that Garnett does not convey the true flavour of Dostoevsky, in particular. But could either of them have done better? English has its own rules, its own stylistic norms. If Nabokov's own work as a translator had been less perverse, less deliberately discordant, it might be easier to accept his views. Brodsky worked mainly as a translator of his own verse from Russian into English. Again, it is unfortunately far easier to discern the merits of that work in English translations by other hands, I'm sorry to say:



Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)


Brodsky, Joseph. Selected Poems. Trans. George L. Kline. Foreword by W. H. Auden. Penguin Modern European Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.

Brodsky, Joseph. Collected Poems in English: Poems Written in English and Poems Translated from the Original Russian by or with the Author. Ed. Ann Kjellberg. 2000. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.





Lev Tolstoy (1897)


It was, I think, William Faulkner who said, when asked what were the three greatest novels of all time, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina.

It may seem a bit presumptuous of me to question the judgement of Brodsky and Nabokov on the merits of Constance Garnett as a translator. Clearly, both as great Russian writers and as profoundly learned students of Russian literature in their own right, the competition is a somewhat unequal one.

I do feel strongly, though, that their strictures would apply just as much to more recent translations of these authors, and that what they are looking for - a kind of mirror of the genius of certain masters of the Russian language within the very different medium of English - is not really attainable in this world.

A brief experiment would therefore seem to be in order. I propose to take the famous opening passage of Tolstoy's great novel, and compare the different versions of it by various translators.

I hasten to say that my own Russian - a few memories of my schooldays, when it was taught to us as an "advanced" alternative to Latin - is rusty in the extreme. I can, however, read the language to some extent, so I'm not flying entirely blind:



Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina (1878)


Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

Все смешалось в доме Облонских. Жена узнала, что муж был в связи с бывшею в их доме француженкою-гувернанткой, и объявила мужу, что не может жить с ним в одном доме. Положение это продолжалось уже третий день и мучительно чувствовалось и самими супругами, и всеми членами семьи, и домочадцами. Все члены семьи и домочадцы чувствовали, что нет смысла в их сожительстве и что на каждом постоялом дворе случайно сошедшиеся люди более связаны между собой, чем они, члены семьи и домочадцы Облонских. Жена не выходила из своих комнат, мужа третий день не было дома. Дети бегали по всему дому, как потерянные; англичанка поссорилась с экономкой и написала записку приятельнице, прося приискать ей новое место; повар ушел вчера со двора, во время самого обеда; черная кухарка и кучер просили расчета.
- Russian text (1878)




Leo Tolstoy: Works, trans. Constance Garnett (6 vols: 1901-04)


Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarrelled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.
- Constance Garnett (1901)




Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (1970)


All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was upset in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered an intrigue between her husband and their former French governess, and declared that she would not continue to live under the same roof with him. This state of things had now lasted for three days, and not only the husband and wife but the rest of the family and the whole household suffered from it. They all felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that any group of people who had met together by chance at an inn would have had more in common than they. The wife kept to her own rooms, the husband stopped away from home all day; the children ran about all over the house uneasily; the English governess quarrelled with the housekeeper and wrote to a friend asking if she could find her another situation; the cook had gone out just at dinner-time the day before and had not returned; and the kitchen-maid and coachman had given notice.
- Louise and Aylmer Maude (1918)




Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenin, trans. Rosemary Edmonds (1978)


All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.

Everything had gone wrong in the Oblonsky household. The wife had found out about her husband' relationship with their former French governess and had announced that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This state of affairs had already continued for three days and was having a distressing effect on the couple themselves, on all the members of the family, and on the domestics. They all felt that there was no sense in their all living together under the same roof and that any group of people who chanced to meet at a wayside inn would have more in common than they, the members of the Oblonsky family, and their servants. The wife did not leave her own rooms and the husband stayed away from home all day. The children strayed all over the house, not knowing what to do with themselves. The English governess had quarrelled with the housekeeper and had written a note asking a friend to find her a new place. The head-cook had gone out right at dinner-time the day before. The under-cook and the coachman had given notice.
- Rosemary Edmonds (1954)



Let's take, first, that most famous of opening sentences for a novel (alongside, perhaps, 'Call me Ishmael" and 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"). The Russian reads:
Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

Vsye schastliviye syem'i pokhozhu drug na drug, kazhdaya nyeschastlivaya syem'ya nyeschastlivaya po-svoyemu.

[All happy families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way]
One would have to admit that the Maudes are somewhat more literal in their observance of the exact order of words in the Russian sentence. Garnett's slightly rearranged version does sound rather more epigrammatic in English, however. There's not a lot in it. The meaning of the sentence is not really in doubt in any of them. Edmonds is admirably concise.
Все смешалось в доме Облонских.

Vsye smyeshalos' v domye Oblonskikh.

[Everything was mixed-up / topsy-turvy in the house of the Oblonskys]

Жена узнала, что муж был в связи с бывшею в их доме француженкою-гувернанткой, и объявила мужу, что не может жить с ним в одном доме.

Zhyena uznala, chto muzh byl v svyazi s byvsheyu v ikh domye frantsuzhyenkoyu-guvernantkoy, i ob"yavila muzhu, chto nye mozhyet zhit' s nim v odnom domye

[The wife had learned that her husband was in connection with the former French governess in their house, and had told her husband that she could not live together with him in the same house.]

Положение это продолжалось уже третий день и мучительно чувствовалось и самими супругами, и всеми членами семьи, и домочадцами.

Polozhyeniye eto prodolzhalos' uzhye tryetiy den' i muchityel'no chuvstvovalos' i samimi suprugami, i vsyemi chlyenami sem'i, i domochadtsami.

[This situation was continuing for the third day, and was painfully felt both by the spouses themselves, as well as all members of the family and the household.]

Все члены семьи и домочадцы чувствовали, что нет смысла в их сожительстве и что на каждом постоялом дворе случайно сошедшиеся люди более связаны между собой, чем они, члены семьи и домочадцы Облонских.

Vse chlyeny syem'i i domochadtsy chuvstvovali, chto nyet smysla v ikh sozhityel'stve i chto na kazhdom postoyalom dvorye sluchayno soshyedshiyesya lyudi boleye svyazany myezhdu soboy, chyem oni, chlyeny syem'i i domochadtsy Oblonskikh.

[All members of the family and the household felt that there was no point in their living together, and that at any inn, the people who happened to come together were more connected with one another than they, the members of the Oblonsky family and household.]

Жена не выходила из своих комнат, мужа третий день не было дома. Дети бегали по всему дому, как потерянные; англичанка поссорилась с экономкой и написала записку приятельнице, прося приискать ей новое место; повар ушел вчера со двора, во время самого обеда; черная кухарка и кучер просили расчета.

Zhyena ne vykhodila iz svoikh komnat, muzha tryetiy dyen' ne bylo doma. Dyeti byegali po vsyemu domu, kak poteryannyye; anglichanka possorilas' s ekonomkoy i napisala zapisku priyatel'nitse, prosya priiskat' yey novoye mesto; povar ushyel vchyera so dvora, vo vryemya samogo obyeda; chyernaya kukharka i kucher prosili raschyeta.

[The wife did not leave her rooms; the husband was not at home for the third day. Children ran all over the house like lost souls; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper and wrote a note to a friend, asking her to find her a new place; the cook had left the day before during the dinner service; the kitchenmaid and the coachman had asked for their wages.]
There are no very important divergences in meaning in any of these three translations. How could there be? The latter two had the advantage of Garnett's translation to guide them, but all were competent Russian scholars, perfectly capable of understanding the surface meaning and the underlying nuances of Tolstoy's wonderfully balanced prose.

You can see from the literal version above, though, that differences of idiom between the two languages make it difficult to preserve the insistent repetitions of such phrases as "vsyemi chlyenami sem'i" [all members of the family] and "domochadtsami" [household staff]. With the best will in the world, something is lost here in translation between Russian and English.

But does it matter? The Maudes certainly make a virtue of being less "free" than Garnett is in her transpositions and remodellings of the passage to sound like good English prose. In keeping with the ethos of the Penguin Classics, Edmonds tries to make the language of her translation sound as unpretentious and contemporary as possible - though given that there's now more distance between us and her (65 years) than there was between her and Constance Garnett (53 years), it's hard now to detect that much difference between them.

If you're a student of Russian needing a crib, I suspect that the Maudes would suit your purposes best. For sheer ease of reading, Edmonds is hard to beat (I once read most of her translation of War and Peace on an eighteen-hour plane flight, so I know what I'm talking about). Why do we still need Constance Garnett, then? Distinguished Slavonic scholar and teacher Gary Saul Morson summed it all up rather nicely when he wrote, in 1997:
I love Constance Garnett, and wish I had a framed picture of her on my wall, since I have often thought that what I do for a living is teach the Collected Works of Constance Garnett. She has a fine sense of English, and, especially, the sort of English that appears in British fiction of the realist period, which makes her ideal for translating the Russian masterpieces. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were constantly reading and learning from Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot and others. Every time someone else redoes one of these works, reviewers say that the new version replaces Garnett; and then another version comes out, which, apparently, replaces Garnett again, and so on. She must have done something right.
Quite so. Garnett brings with her a flavour of a classic era in English prose, and given her much greater proximity to the golden age of Russian prose, you discard what she brings to the table at your peril.

Perhaps it would be easiest to say, then, that you need never feel ashamed of concentrating most of your attention on Constance Garnett's translations of the great Russian prose writers. Would we had anyone capable of performing such a feat for the great Russian poets - Pushkin in particular - whose merits will have to continue to be taken on trust by English readers.






Constance Garnett (1861-1946)

Constance Clara Garnett (née Black):
A Chronological Bibliography


Constance Garnett's wikipedia page lists her as having published 71 volumes of Russian literature in translation, which also happens to be the total I've reached below. David Remnick's 2005 New Yorker article The Translation Wars gives the total as 70 (presumably by subtracting the collection by Maxim Gorky, only partially translated by Garnett).

The bibliography on pp.207-8 of Carolyn Heilbrun's The Garnett Family (1961) includes one additional book, Madame Lenev's Folk Songs of Great Russia, translated by Garnett, but published privately on an unspecified date.

Perhaps this is why Edna O'Brien's 2011 review of the reissue of Richard Garnett's 1991 biography Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life revises the total up to 73. How that number could otherwise have been arrived at, I'm not really sure.

In any case, the list below is as complete as I can make it. I've combined information from my own collection with the online listings here, as well as the dates and publication details given by Heilbrun (op. cit.).


    [in chronological order]:



    Ivan Goncharov: A Common Story (1894)


    Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891)
    [1 vol: 1894]
  1. Gontcharoff, Ivan. A Common Story. 1847. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1894.



  2. Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace (3 vols)


    Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)
    [8 vols: 1894-1922]
  3. Tolstoy, Leo. The Kingdom of God is Within You. 1894. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1894.

  4. Tolstoy, Count Leo. Anna Karenin: A Novel. 1877. Trans. Constance Garnett. 2 vols. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1901.

  5. Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and Other Stories. 1886. Trans. Constance Garnett (1902)

  6. Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. 1869. Trans. Constance Garnett. 3 vols. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1904.

  7. Tolstoy, Leo. Christianity and Patriotism. 1895. Trans. Constance Garnett (1922)



  8. Ivan Turgenev: The Torrents of Spring (1897)


    Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)
    [18 vols: 1894-1934]
  9. Turgenev, Ivan. Rudin. 1857. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 1. London: William Heinemann, 1894.

  10. Turgenev, Ivan. A House of Gentlefolk. 1859. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 2. London: William Heinemann, 1894.

  11. Turgenev, Ivan. On the Eve: a Novel. 1860. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 3. London: William Heinemann, 1895.

  12. Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Children: A Novel. 1862. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 4. London: William Heinemann, 1895.

  13. Turgenev, Ivan. Smoke. 1867. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 5. London: William Heinemann, 1896.

  14. Turgenev, Ivan. Virgin Soil. 1877. Trans. Constance Garnett. 2 vols. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 6-7. London: William Heinemann, 1896.

  15. Turgenev, Ivan. A Sportsman’s Sketches. 1852. Trans. Constance Garnett. 2 vols. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 8-9. London: William Heinemann, 1895.

  16. Turgenev, Ivan. Dream Tales and Prose Poems. 1882. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 10. London: William Heinemann, 1897.

  17. Turgenev, Ivan. The Torrents of Spring, etc. 1872. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 11. London: William Heinemann, 1897.

  18. Turgenev, Ivan. A Lear of the Steppes, etc. 1870. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 12. London: William Heinemann, 1898.

  19. Turgenev, Ivan. The Diary of a Superfluous Man, etc. 1850. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 13. London: William Heinemann, 1899.

  20. Turgenev, Ivan. A Desperate Character, etc. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 14. London: William Heinemann, 1899.

  21. Turgenev, Ivan. The Jew, etc. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 15. London: William Heinemann, 1899.

  22. Turgenev, Ivan. The Two Friends and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 16. London: William Heinemann, 1921.

  23. Turgenev, Ivan. Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 17. London: William Heinemann, 1922.

  24. Turgenev, Ivan. Three Famous Plays: A Month in the Country; A Provincial Lady; A Poor Gentleman. 1850, 1851, 1841. Trans. Constance Garnett. Introduction by David Garnett. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd. / New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934.



  25. Alexander Ostrovsky: The Storm (1899)


    Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886)
    [1 vol: 1899]
  26. Ostrovsky, Alexander. The Storm. 1859. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Duckworth, 1899.



  27. Maxim Gorky: Twenty-Six Men and a Girl (1902)


    Maxim Gorky (1868-1936)
    [1 vol: 1902]
  28. Gorky, Maxim. 'Chelkash,' in Twenty-Six Men and a Girl. 1899. Trans. Constance Garnett et al. London: Duckworth, 1902.



  29. Constantine Feldmann: The Revolt of the "Potemkin" (1908)


    Constantine Feldmann (?-d.1937)
    [1 vol: 1908]
  30. Feldmann, Constantine. The Revolt of the "Potemkin". 1908. Trans. Constance Garnett (1908)



  31. Constance Garnett, trans.: Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky (12 vols)


    Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
    [12 vols: 1912-20]
  32. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. 1881. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 1 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1912.

  33. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. 1869. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 2 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1913.

  34. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Possessed. 1872. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 3 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

  35. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. 1866. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 4 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

  36. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The House of the Dead. 1862. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 5 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1915.

  37. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Insulted and Injured. 1861. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 6 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1915.

  38. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. A Raw Youth. 1875. Trans. Constance Garnett. 1916. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 7 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1916.

  39. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Eternal Husband, and Other Stories: The Double / A Gentle Spirit. 1870, 1846 & 1876. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 8 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1917.

  40. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Gambler, and Other Stories: Poor People / The Landlady. 1867, 1846 & 1847. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 9 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

  41. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. White Nights, and Other Stories: Notes from Underground / A Faint Heart / A Christmas Tree and a Wedding / Polzunkov / A Little Hero / Mr. Prokhartchin. 1848, 1864, 1848, 1848, 1848, 1849 & 1846. Trans. Constance Garnett. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 10 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1918.

  42. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. An Honest Thief, and Other Stories: Uncle’s Dream / A Novel in Nine Letters / An Unpleasant Predicament / Another Man’s Wife / The Heavenly Christmas Tree / The Peasant Marey / The Crocodile / Bobok / The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. 1848, 1859, 1847, 1862, 1848, 1876, 1876, 1865, 1873 & 1877. Trans. Constance Garnett. 1919. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 11 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1919.

  43. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Friend of the Family, and Other Stories: Nyetochka Nyezvanov. 1859 & 1849. Trans. Constance Garnett. 1920. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Vol. 12 of 12. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1920.



  44. Anton Tchehov: The Witch and Other Stories (1918)


    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904)
    [17 vols: 1916-26]
  45. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. I: The Darling and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. Introduction by Edward Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1916.

  46. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. II: The Duel and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1916.

  47. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. III: The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1917.

  48. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. IV: The Party and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1917.

  49. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. V: The Wife and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1918.

  50. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. VI: The Witch and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1918.

  51. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. VII: The Bishop and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1919.

  52. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. VIII: The Chorus Girl and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1920.

  53. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. IX: The Schoolmistress and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1920.

  54. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. X: The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1921.

  55. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. XI: The Schoolmaster and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1921.

  56. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. XII: The Cook’s Wedding and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1922.

  57. Tchehov, Anton. The Tales of Tchehov, Vol. XIII: Love and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1922.

  58. Tchehov, Anton. The Plays of Tchehov, Vol. I: The Cherry Orchard and Other Plays. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923.

  59. Tchehov, Anton. The Plays of Tchehov, Vol. II: Three Sisters and Other Plays. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923.

  60. Garnett, Constance, trans. Letters of Anton Tchehov to His Family and Friends. London: Chatto & Windus, 1920.

  61. Garnett, Constance, trans. Letters of Anton Tchehov to Olga Leonardovna Knipper. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926.



  62. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852)
    [6 vols: 1922-28]
  63. Gogol, Nikolay. Dead Souls. 1842. Trans. Constance Garnett. 2 vols. London: Chatto & Windus, 1922.

  64. Gogol, Nikolay. The Overcoat and Other Stories. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923.

  65. Gogol, Nikolay. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926.

  66. Gogol, Nikolay. The Government Inspector and Other Plays. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926.

  67. Gogol, Nikolay. Mirgorod. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1928.



  68. Alexander Herzen: My Past and Thoughts (vol. iii)


    Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870)
    [6 vols: 1924-26]
  69. Herzen, Alexander. My Past and Thoughts, 6 vols. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1924-1926.




  70. [in alphabetical order]:

    Chekhov (1916-26): 17 vols
    Dostoyevsky (1912-20): 12 vols
    Feldmann (1908): 1 vol
    Gogol (1922-28): 6 vols
    Goncharov (1894): 1 vol
    Gorky (1902): 1 vol
    Herzen (1924-26): 6 vols
    Ostrovsky (1899): 1 vol
    Tolstoy (1894-1922): 8 vols
    Turgenev (1894-1934): 18 vols

    = 71 volumes in all


    Osip Braz: Portrait of Anton Chekhov (1898)