Navigating male-dominated spaces: Victorian-era Anglo–German women translators, gender, and authorised translations

1.Interventionist textual strategies and women translators’ active agency in translation history

Scholars have noted how nineteenth-century women translators translating from German into English were often anxious not to have their names mentioned in public (Maierhofer 2024Maierhofer, Waltraud 2024 “Ottilie von Goethe: Kulturvermittlung zwischen Vorurteilen gegen schreibende Frauen und Emanzipation [Ottilie von Goethe: Cultural mediation between prejudices against women writers and emancipation].” In FVF Jahrbuch 2023: Deutsch–britischer Kulturtransfer im Vormärz [FVF yearbook 2023: German–British cultural transfer in the Vormärz period], edited by Andrew Cusack, 151–168. Bielefeld: Aisthesis., 152).11.I am aware that gender does in reality not fit into a binary scheme of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. The term ‘woman translator’ represents a constructed, rather than essential category. I also acknowledge that it can be problematic to determine the self-identification of historical figures unable to speak for themselves (Yarn 2022Yarn, Molly G. 2022 Shakespeare’s ‘Lady Editors’: A New History of the Shakespearean Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 9). Yarn herself refers to the Women in Book History Bibliography (n.d.)Women in Book History Bibliography n.d. “Women in Book History Bibliography.” Accessed November 22, 2023. https://​www​.womensbookhistory​.org​/our​-mission. This is not especially surprising considering the norms and values Victorian society assigned to women, and the ways in which they learned and internalised them (Poovey 1984Poovey, Mary 1984 The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press., xii–xiii, 6, 15, 21). In a historical moment when the public sphere was seen as the domain of men, while respectable middle-class women were increasingly restricted to the home (Eger et al. 2001Eger, Elizabeth, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton 2001 “Introduction: Women, Writing and Representation.” In Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830, edited by Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 1, 9), women “were likely to have experienced a bias against expressing their opinions in public or engaging in literary creation” (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 126; see also Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 72–86). Referring to perhaps the best-known nineteenth-century woman translator from German into English, Sarah Austin, Stark (1999Stark, Susanne 1999 ‘Behind Inverted Commas’: Translation and Anglo–German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters., 37) describes the occupation of translating as “a specifically female flight from public recognition,” as women often opted for translation work rather than independent authorship (see also Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 126, 128). While the strict separation between public and private spheres as mutually exclusive categories has been criticised (Eger et al. 2001Eger, Elizabeth, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton 2001 “Introduction: Women, Writing and Representation.” In Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830, edited by Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 3; Tomaselli 2001Tomaselli, Sylvana 2001 “The Most Public Sphere of All: The Family.” In Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830, edited by Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton, 239–256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), the idea that Victorian women translators shied away from being exposed to public perception has remained the prevalent narrative about Victorian women translators from German.

Researchers, including Stark herself, have since been successful in showing that women translators did nevertheless not necessarily “remain mute, transparent, and devoid of opinion” (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 128). Scholars working on various time periods and linguistic contexts have explored translational practices like the conscious selection of source texts, prefacing, footnoting, and rewriting. Critical of the “asymmetrical power relationships between dominant, highly visible authors and their subservient, often largely invisible, translators” (Martin 2022Martin, Alison E. 2022 “Mediating Knowledge: Women Translating Science.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660, edited by Clarie G. Jones, Alison E. Martin, and Alexis Wolf, 381–397. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. , 382), these scholars have aimed to demonstrate that women translators through the centuries have not merely passively reproduced an original text (Zinsser 2001Zinsser, Judith P. 2001 “Translating Newton’s Principia: The Marquise du Châtelet’s Revisions and Additions for a French Audience.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 55 (1): 227–245. ; Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 3; Orr 2015Orr, Mary 2015 “The Stuff of Translation and Independent Female Scientific Authorship: The Case of Taxidermy…, anon. (1820).” Journal of Literature and Science 8 (1): 27–47. , 28; Bodammer 2019Bodammer, Eleoma 2019 “Translating Religion: German Women Translators of Robert Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ in the Nineteenth Century.” German Life and Letters 72 (2): 129–150. ). Women translators have employed “subversive force” (Von Flotow 1997Von Flotow, Luise 1997 Translation and Gender: Translating in the ‘Era of Feminism’. Manchester: St. Jerome. , 74) and have dared to “translate against” (45) the original text, while hiding behind “rhetorics of submission” (Robinson 1995Robinson, Douglas 1995 “Theorizing Translation in a Woman’s Voice: Subverting the Rhetoric of Patronage, Courtly Love and Morality.” The Translator 1 (2): 153–175. , 154). Their interventions have been seen as a “confident assertion of […] intellectual autonomy” (Mason 2006Mason, Adrienne 2006 “Translation as Cultural Capital in the Writings of Mme Du Châtelet.” In Emilie Du Châtelet: Rewriting Enlightenment Philosophy and Science, edited by Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Chandler Hayes, 124–141. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation., 139) as these allowed them to gain “real authority in the public sphere” (Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 7) — and justly so. By highlighting creative translational strategies, scholars have countered an image of women translators which “reflected the role into which many female authors […] felt themselves corralled by a need to conform to traditional values” (Martin 2022Martin, Alison E. 2022 “Mediating Knowledge: Women Translating Science.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660, edited by Clarie G. Jones, Alison E. Martin, and Alexis Wolf, 381–397. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. , 388).

Sceptics have raised the counterargument that many such interventions would have themselves remained invisible to readers who did not actively compare source and target text (Healy 2004Healy, Michelle 2004 The Cachet of the ‘Invisible’ Translator: Englishwomen Translating Science (1650–1850). PhD thesis. University of Ottawa., 25). More problematically, however, fidelity and “close adherence to the original text” became associated with the unpopular image of “the woman translator as a faithful, uncreative servant” (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 128). Strategies of textually subverting “the stabilizing force exerted [by] concepts like (in)fidelity” (Robinson 1995Robinson, Douglas 1995 “Theorizing Translation in a Woman’s Voice: Subverting the Rhetoric of Patronage, Courtly Love and Morality.” The Translator 1 (2): 153–175. , 171) have become almost synonymous with women translators’ “professional self-assertion” (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 128, 130). The decision by a Victorian woman to adopt a source-oriented translation style, in turn, has been equated with a woman translator’s “conformity with [the] traditional values” (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 126) of Victorian femininity. Scholars’ juxtaposition of two seemingly exclusive strategies — textual interventions on the one hand, and close adherence to the original author’s words on the other — has unwittingly created a narrow view of nineteenth-century women translators’ actual agency. The many women translators who adhered rather closely to their source texts, and who for various reasons felt a strong sense of responsibility towards their source texts and/or authors, have not yet received the attention they deserve. Victorian women translators’ strategies of professional assertion went beyond questions of style and interventionist practices. Translation scholars must of course include textual and paratextual analyses, but they must also turn to what archives can reveal (Munday 2014Munday, Jeremy 2014 “Using Primary Sources to Produce a Microhistory of Translation and Translators: Theoretical and Methodological Concerns.” The Translator 20 (1): 64–80. ). This approach will allow us to sketch a fuller picture of the conditions in which women translators worked (64) and how they made use of the opportunities available to them.

This article focuses on two such translators, who have received hardly any scholarly attention to date: Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt (1833–1875) and L. Dora Schmitz (1844–1926). Like many other professional women, Bunnètt and Schmitz had to develop business skills when dealing with publishers and selecting texts (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 125; Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 8). For them, growing a network of contacts and using social and symbolic capital (Mason 2006Mason, Adrienne 2006 “Translation as Cultural Capital in the Writings of Mme Du Châtelet.” In Emilie Du Châtelet: Rewriting Enlightenment Philosophy and Science, edited by Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Chandler Hayes, 124–141. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.; Pickford 2012Pickford, Susan 2012 “Writing with ‘Manly Vigour’: Translational Agency in Two Early Nineteenth-Century English Translations of François Pouqueville’s Voyage en Morée, à Constantinople et en Albanie (1805).” In Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750–1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender, edited by Alison E. Martin and Susan Pickford, 198–217. New York: Routledge., 212) were crucial skills to strategically navigate the male-dominated professional spheres of scholarship and publishing. Their interactions with publishers and authors demonstrate how, within the social context in which they operated, their agency was intertwined with that of other participants in the translation event (Jansen and Wegener 2013Jansen, Hanne, and Anna Wegener 2013 “Multiple Translatorship.” In Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation 1: Collaborative Relationships between Authors, Translators, and Performers, edited by Hanne Jansen and Anna Wegener, 1–38. Montréal: Éditions québécoises de l’œuvre, collection Vita Traductiva., 2, 11), and how gender played a decisive role.

Johns (2010Johns, Alessa 2010 “Anna Jameson in Germany: ‘A.W.’ and Women’s Translation.” Translation and Literature 19 (2): 190–195. , 193) notes “the importance of personal contacts and networking” for English–German translators in the first half of the nineteenth century. Women translators travelled back and forth between the two linguistic areas, and their “friendships and acquaintanceships maintained through occasional visits and correspondences over decades played a part in determining which texts were translated and sold in Germany as well as England” (ibid.). As my case studies will underscore, this kind of networking remained crucial for Anglo–German translation flows in the Victorian period. Since women played a central role in Anglo–German translation during the Victorian period (e.g., Stark 1999Stark, Susanne 1999 ‘Behind Inverted Commas’: Translation and Anglo–German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.; Johnston 2013Johnston, Judith 2013 Victorian Women and the Economies of Travel, Translation and Culture, 1830–1870. London: Routledge.; Martin 2020Martin, Alison E. 2020 Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.), what networking looked like in particular for women — in my case studies for two unmarried and childless women translators (Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 65, 75–76) — is central for understanding Anglo–German translation flows in the nineteenth century. Drawing on material from nine different archives in Germany and the UK, I show how Bunnètt and Schmitz operated within contexts that were defined by the authorisation of their translations.

2.Authorised translations: Transferring the symbolic capital of original authorship

Translations can gain the status of an authorised translation in many different ways (Batchelor 2018Batchelor, Kathryn 2018 Translation and Paratexts. London: Routledge., 79). The degree of control the various participants have in the various stages of the translation event varies considerably and cannot simply be deduced from the label on the title page. Even though an authorised translation is generally assumed to depict the wishes of the author of the source text, and therefore to adhere closely to the source text, “the label itself offering reassurance of quality and reliability” (92), authorised translations do not always fulfil these expectations (Van der Knaap 1998Van der Knaap, Ewout 1998 “De zondeval van de vertaler: Over Nico Rost en Alfred Döblin [The translator’s fall from grace: On Nico Rost and Alfred Döblin].” Filter: Tijdschrift over Vertalen [Filter: Journal on translation] 5 (2): 47–53., 47–53; Batchelor 2018Batchelor, Kathryn 2018 Translation and Paratexts. London: Routledge., 89). Yet, in the case of Schmitz and Bunnètt, they were generally fulfilled. To give some examples, reviewers of Bunnètt’s translation of Gervinus’s Shakespeare (1863) found that her close adherence to the source text sometimes even went too far (The Globe and Traveler 1863Gervinus, Georg Gottfried 1863 Shakespeare Commentaries. Translated under the Author’s Superintendence by F. E. Bunnètt. London: Smith and Elder.; The Morning Post 1863The Morning Post 1863 “Professor Gervinus on Shakspere.” January 8.). The “translatress” was attacked for not being “sufficiently aware that a translation which attempts to be too closely literal cannot render any author satisfactorily” ( The Globe and Traveler 1863The Academy 1875 “Postscript.” March 6.).

The language of servitude delineated in Section 1 is still frequently, albeit critically, employed in contemporary scholarship concerned with femininity and translation. It reflects the cultural hierarchy between producers and reproducers of original texts (Mason 2006Mason, Adrienne 2006 “Translation as Cultural Capital in the Writings of Mme Du Châtelet.” In Emilie Du Châtelet: Rewriting Enlightenment Philosophy and Science, edited by Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Chandler Hayes, 124–141. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation., 127). In her seminal article “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation” from 1988 (reprinted in 2000), Chamberlain argues that the relationship between author and translator reflects gendered cultural hierarchies on a micro-level, and that the question of textual faithfulness and gender relations are culturally intertwined and engrained in the vocabulary underpinning the discourse on translation. The translation is ‘faithful’ to the source text: the latter being “original and ‘masculine’,” the former “derivative and ‘feminine’” (Chamberlain 1988Chamberlain, Lori 1988 “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation.” Signs 13 (3): 454–472. , 455). As I have noted in Section 1, translation scholars have shown that women translators were not in practice all ‘submissive’. Some of them opted for translation as a profession, which allowed them economic and social emancipation (Pickford 2012Pickford, Susan 2012 “Writing with ‘Manly Vigour’: Translational Agency in Two Early Nineteenth-Century English Translations of François Pouqueville’s Voyage en Morée, à Constantinople et en Albanie (1805).” In Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750–1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender, edited by Alison E. Martin and Susan Pickford, 198–217. New York: Routledge., 198): “The act of translation has proven to be not one of subservience; yet this myth has traditionally made room for women writers to take on a role that inadvertently gives them a public voice” (Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 3–4). Yet, Chamberlain’s reflections on the cultural hierarchy of original and translation, and its relation to gender, still help us analyse authorised translations from a gender perspective, particularly in the cases of Bunnètt and Schmitz, as “translation was often feminised as a derivative of the original” in the Victorian period (Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 94). According to Chamberlain, the metaphorics of translation reveal “an anxiety about the myths of paternity (or authorship and authority)” (Chamberlain 1988Chamberlain, Lori 1988 “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation.” Signs 13 (3): 454–472. , 461). I would argue that so do authorised translations. Within the conventional hierarchical logic, “the female translator of a female author’s text and the male translator of a male author’s text will be bound by the same power relations” (472). Yet, “the translator is frequently a woman — so that sex and the gender-ascribed secondariness of the task frequently coincide” (467). This would certainly seem to hold true in a mid-to-late nineteenth-century German scholarly context, in which the vast majority of authors were men (see, e.g., Paulin 2003Paulin, Roger 2003 The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany 1682–1914: Native Literature and Foreign Genius. Hildesheim: Olms.), but where women translators played a prominent role.

Elaborating on the idea of declarative authorship, Love wrote that the function of the author’s name on the title page is that of a ‘validator’: “the placing of a name upon the title-page” indicates “a form of sponsorship or fostering” (Love 2002Love, Harald 2002 Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 44). Names of authors were originally attached to texts “as a way of conferring dignity on these writings and making sure they were taken seriously” (45). In addition, with their name, the author assumes the task of “shouldering the responsibilities and accepting the benefits that flow from this” (ibid.). With this in mind, we can conclude that labels of authorisation extend the original author’s ownership beyond the source text editions and limit the degree to which it is transferred to the translator. The claim that the translator’s product depicts the author’s wishes is supposed to increase the value of the translation in public perception. If we assume that authorship of cultural products creates symbolic capital and social recognition for the author (Bourdieu 2018Bourdieu, Pierre 2018 “The Forms of Capital.” In The Sociology of Economic Life, edited by Mark Granovetter, 78–92. New York: Routledge. , 81; Schögler 2019Schögler, Rafael Y. 2019 “Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field.” In Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field, edited by Rafael Schögler, 9–28. Berlin: Peter Lang. , 11), authorised translations try to bestow the repute of original authorship upon the translation. The translation, rather than just being a foreign surrogate for the source text, is meant to be consecrated by the original author. The labels allow the original author to “own the words” (Love 2002Love, Harald 2002 Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 45) of the translation in public perception, even though they were written by the translator. They assert the author’s authority over the translated text. To borrow Chamberlain’s words, the practice of authorising translations “mimics the patrilineal kinship system where paternity — not maternity — legitimises an offspring” (Chamberlain 1988Chamberlain, Lori 1988 “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation.” Signs 13 (3): 454–472. , 456). The gendered “struggle for authority and the politics of originality informing this struggle” (455) is equally a struggle for symbolic capital in the public sphere of scholarly publishing, and, by extension, for economic capital (Bourdieu 2018Bourdieu, Pierre 2018 “The Forms of Capital.” In The Sociology of Economic Life, edited by Mark Granovetter, 78–92. New York: Routledge. , 81, 87). Certainly in the nineteenth-century Anglo–German academic context, the stamp of authorisation on translated scholarship is a performative reinforcement of unequal gendered power relationships.

Labels to indicate the source text author’s authorisation of their work in English were used increasingly in British translations of German works, particularly scholarly works, in the second half of the nineteenth century. After the decline of Latin as lingua franca in the circulation of knowledge, nineteenth-century scientists and scholars needed foreign works in their discipline to appear in a modern language they could read (Martin 2020Martin, Alison E. 2020 Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press., 2). Contributing to the rise in Anglo–German cultural exchanges in the nineteenth century (Ashton 1980Ashton, Rosemary 1980 The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 147–177; Davis 2007Davis, John R. 2007 The Victorians and Germany. Bern: Peter Lang.), Germans increasingly viewed the British audience as an outlet for their artworks and books (Davis 2007Davis, John R. 2007 The Victorians and Germany. Bern: Peter Lang., 25, 248). In addition, changes in international copyright law in the middle of the nineteenth century were welcomed by scholars, as they allowed them to gain income from the translation of their books (Martin 2020Martin, Alison E. 2020 Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press., 196; see also Saunders 1992Saunders, David 1992 Authorship and Copyright. London: Routledge., 169–180; Seville 1999Seville, Catherine 1999 Literary Copyright Reform in Early Victorian England: The Framing of the 1842 Copyright Act. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 240–147; Sonoda 2007Sonoda, Akiko 2007 “Historical Overview of Formation of International Copyright Agreements in the Process of Development of International Copyright Law from the 1830s to 1960s.” IIP Bulletin (Institute of Intellectual Property) 22: 1–9., 2). Those changes meant that authors gradually got more involved in the translation event of their own scientific and scholarly works. From the source text authors’ point of view, there were various reasons for initiating a translation, such as increasing the reach of their work and internationalising their scholarly reputation. One argument in favour of releasing an authorised translation in particular would have been to retain “epistemic authority” (Schögler 2019Schögler, Rafael Y. 2019 “Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field.” In Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field, edited by Rafael Schögler, 9–28. Berlin: Peter Lang. , 11): if authors were concerned about what translation would do to their ideas, one solution was to gain control over the shape they assumed in foreign languages (Link 2019Link, Fabian 2019 “Norbert Elias’s Struggle to ‘Civilize’ Translators: On Elias’s Frustrations with Being Translated and Interpreted.” In Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field, edited by Rafael Schögler, 161–184. Berlin: Peter Lang.). As intermediaries in copyright matters, translators could even occasionally be asked to pay the author a fee in order to obtain the right of calling an edition an “authorised translation” (Paloposki 2017Paloposki, Outi 2017 “In Search of an Ordinary Translator: Translator Histories, Working Practices and Translator–Publisher Relations in the Light of Archival Documents.” The Translator 23 (1): 31–48. , 39). These developments meant that translators became more dependent on the original authors for the selection of texts, for permission to translate, or even for minor textual choices. The source text author’s inclusion in the process, and the fact that some of the decision-making power was ceded to them, could limit the translator’s own latitude. At the same time, it created opportunities. In Section 3, I will illustrate how two Victorian-era women translators seized those opportunities by navigating author-dependent translations in a way that allowed them to accumulate and use social and symbolic capital to their advantage.

3.Victorian-era Anglo–German women translators: Case studies from the archive

Lina Theodora Schmitz (1844–1926), who usually signed and published as L. Dora Schmitz, translated various works by German authors, mostly of a scholarly nature, into English. She was born into an educated and well-connected bilingual family. Leonhard Schmitz, her father, was a renowned classical scholar, an important figure in the Victorian British educational system, and a translator of important scholarly texts himself. He moved to England after marrying an Englishwoman (Ashton 2004/2006Ashton, Rosemary 2004/2006 “Schmitz, Leonhard (1807–1890).” Accessed August 20, 2024. ; Davis 2007Davis, John R. 2007 The Victorians and Germany. Bern: Peter Lang., 164, 167, 271).22.He was, among other things, the translator and editor of Niebuhr, headmaster of the Royal High School in Edinburgh for twenty years, first rector of the International College London, Fellow at the Royal Society in Edinburgh, and temporary tutor in Roman History of Albert, Prince of Wales (Ashton 2004/2006Ashton, Rosemary 2004/2006 “Schmitz, Leonhard (1807–1890).” Accessed August 20, 2024. ). In almost every case in which Schmitz translated a work by a living author, her translation was published with a label signalling authorisation by the original author. Her first book translation had still appeared anonymously and without authorisation. The second one, Essays on Shakespeare by Karl Elze (1874), was “Translated with the Author’s Sanction.” Heinrich Schliemann’s Troy and Its Remains (1875) bears the same label. Both Elze’s Shakespeare biography (1888) and the volumes of Julius Stinde’s bestseller The Buchholz Family (1887) were labelled an “Authorized Translation.” Hermann Ulrici’s Dramatic Art: History and Character of Shakespeare’s Plays (1876Ulrici, Hermann 1876 Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art: History and Character of Shakspeare’s Plays. From the Third Edition of the German, with Additions and Corrections by the Author. Translated by Dora Schmitz. London: George Bell and Sons.) appeared “with Additions and Corrections by the Author.” Her name was not attached to Oscar Schmidt’s The Mammalia in their Relation to Primaeval Times (1885), presumably to avoid association with a religiously controversial topic.33.BL, Royal Literary Fund, Loan 96 RLF 1/2510: 1 December 1897 — 15 January 1898, application form from 1 December 1897. Schmitz’s tasks went beyond mere translating. She was repeatedly approached by German authors who sent her their works in the hope she would translate them and place them with an English publisher. She also actively looked out for texts herself.

The basic biographical facts on Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt (1833–1875) are more difficult to determine. The difficulties of finding reliable information about historical translators, interpreting and using them appropriately, are well known (Bardet 2021Bardet, Mary 2021 “Literary Detection in the Archives: Revealing Jeanne Heywood (1856–1909).” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 41–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 41–52; Gibbels 2022Gibbels, Elisabeth 2022 “The Lost Case of Women Translators or: The Case of the Lost Women Translators?” Counterpoint 8: 13–18.). One reason for the lack of reliable sources on Bunnètt is her relatively early death at the age of forty-two, which meant that unlike Schmitz she never applied to the Royal Literary Fund, which would have required her to indicate personal data and provide a list of publications. That she died on 19 February 1875 in Budleigh-Salterton is quite certain ( The Academy 1875The Academy 1875 “Postscript.” March 6.). Websites, such as The Online Books Page,44.See https://​onlinebooks​.library​.upenn​.edu/. frequently indicate her birth year as ‘1832 or 1833’. An entry in an Erinnerungsbuch ‘book of memories’ in the archive of the historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus eventually revealed that she was born on 27 December 1832.55.Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Heid. Hs. 2516.

Apart from some books she authored herself — religious-pedagogical and didactic books for children, one romance novel, and one biography — Bunnètt translated at least thirteen books. Among them were four authorised translations: Georg Gottfried Gervinus’ Shakespeare Commentaries (1863Gervinus, Georg Gottfried 1863 Shakespeare Commentaries. Translated under the Author’s Superintendence by F. E. Bunnètt. London: Smith and Elder.; new edition, revised by the translator 1875), according to the title page “translated under the author’s superintendence,” Herman Friedrich Grimm’s Life of Michael Angelo (1865) — “Translated with the Author’s Sanction,” Berthold Auerbach’s novel On The Heights (1868), published as “Authorized Edition,” and, anonymously but “authorised,” David Friedrich Strauss in His Life and Writings by Eduard Zeller (1874)Zeller, Eduard 1874 David Friedrich Strauss in His Life and Writings: Authorised Translation with a Portrait. London: Smith and Elder..

It was not uncommon for translations in the period to appear unattributed. Particularly women often preferred not to be mentioned on the title pages of the books they translated.66.For the context of German translation of English and French novels by nineteenth-century women translators, see Bachleitner (2013Bachleitner, Norbert 2013 “From Scholarly to Commercial Writing: German Women Translators in the Age of the ‘Translation Factories.’” Oxford German Studies 42 (2): 173–188. , 175–176). Schmitz’s name, however, was already printed on title pages early on in her career. Later title pages would mention her previous translations, for example: “By L. Dora Schmitz, Translator of Professor Elze’s ‘Essays on Shakespeare’, and Dr. Schliemann’s ‘Troy and its Remains’” (Ulrici 1876Ulrici, Hermann 1876 Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art: History and Character of Shakspeare’s Plays. From the Third Edition of the German, with Additions and Corrections by the Author. Translated by Dora Schmitz. London: George Bell and Sons.). On Bunnètt’s title pages, her translations were sometimes used as credentials for her original work, and vice versa. Her romantic novel Linked at Last, which is set in a fictional rural South German area, is indicated as having been written “by F. E. Bunnètt, Translator of B. Auerbach’s ‘On the Heights’, Grimm’s ‘Life of Michael Angelo’ &c. &c.” (Bunnètt 1871Bunnètt, Fanny Elizabeth 1871 Linked at Last. London: Henry S. King and Co.). Her translations in this case also serve as proof of her expertise in German matters.

To publish an authorised translation, Schmitz and Bunnètt had to negotiate with the authors as well as with the publishers. With few exceptions, among them her first two book translations, all of Schmitz’s translations were published by Bell and Sons. For the same house, she also edited a volume of correspondence between Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, and a volume of Goethe’s Travels, both with long editorial prefaces (Schiller and Goethe 1877Schiller, Friedrich, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe 1877 Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe from 1794 to 1805. From the Third Edition of the German, with Notes. Vol. 1, 1794–1797. Translated by L. Dora Schmitz. London: George Bell and Sons.; Goethe 1882Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 1882 Goethe’s Works. Vol. XI. — Miscellaneous Travels, Including Letters from Switzerland, Campaign in France, Liege, Mainz, and Rhine Tour. Edited by Dora Schmitz. Translated by Dora Schmitz and others. London: George Bell and Sons.). The decision to translate prestigious names such as Goethe and Schiller testifies to her ambition (Hughes 2022Hughes, Linda 2022 Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 132). The English edition of Schiller’s Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande ‘History of the decline of the united Netherlands’ is preceded by a short preface, presumably by Edward Bell, who specifies: “The translator of the last [essay] is Miss L. D. Schmitz, whose name is already well known through other translations in this Series” (Schiller 1889Schiller, Friedrich 1889 The Revolt of the United Netherlands. With the Trial of Count Egmont and Horn and the Siege of Antwerp; to which is added, the Disturbances in France Preceding the Reign of Henry IV. Translated by A. J. W. Rev, M. A. Morrison, and L. Dora Schmitz. London: George Bell and Sons., n.p.). Weedon describes how, during the Victorian period, the symbolic capital of publisher or series replaced older values and caused “a shift in the reading public’s notions of value attached to a text,” including “its contribution to the reputation of the imprint or series in which it appeared” (Weedon 2003Weedon, Alexis 2003 Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market, 1836–1916. Aldershot: Ashgate., 89). The longstanding work relationship between Schmitz and Bell, who also maintained a friendly personal relationship, including mutual home visits, benefitted both. She reliably delivered high-quality translations and in turn became an established part of the publisher’s programme. By attaching previously earned credentials to her name on the title pages and even putting her name on the spine of a book translation, Bell helped her build a public reputation as a translator. Schmitz aimed at “paratextual visibility” (Healy 2004Healy, Michelle 2004 The Cachet of the ‘Invisible’ Translator: Englishwomen Translating Science (1650–1850). PhD thesis. University of Ottawa., 11) rather than visibility within the translated text. Far beyond displaying her name “immodestly on a title page” (Martin 2022Martin, Alison E. 2022 “Mediating Knowledge: Women Translating Science.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660, edited by Clarie G. Jones, Alison E. Martin, and Alexis Wolf, 381–397. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. , 383), Schmitz’s name was engraved in the spine of her translation of Karl Elze’s Shakespeare biography (1876, transl. 1888). Schmitz herself placed great emphasis on the matter of public visibility. She expressed her satisfaction to Bell after he assigned her the second volume of Julius Stinde’s Buchholz Family: “As you yourself say my name has now become identified with the translation of the book, so I shall be glad if you will entrust the 2nd part to me also.”77.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/345/203, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 17 October 1881. However, when it came to commissioning a translator for the third volume, he opted for someone else. On hearing this, Schmitz responded as follows:

I must confess I am more than surprised to hear that you had “promised” the translation of this volume […] to Miss Powell […] it never occurred to me that you would offer it to any one else […]. It is not that I have a special wish to linger among the Buchholzes myself, but I have to bear in mind what the public is likely to say at the 3rd volume of a work being entrusted to other hand.88.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/220/255, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 29 January 1887.

Bell stuck to his original decision. Their priorities differed. Most likely he wanted the volume out quickly; Schmitz was still working on the translation of Elze’s Shakespeare biography. Elze had been impatient for the translation to be completed.

For German scholars, finding a translator like Bunnètt and Schmitz was necessary to achieve much-desired international recognition. Translations of academic texts are assumed to imply scholarly approval for the source text author, while the author’s reputation might in turn reflect positively on the translator (Schögler 2018Schögler, Rafael Y. 2018 “Translation in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Circulating and Canonizing Knowledge.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 38: 62–90., 63; 2019Schögler, Rafael Y. 2019 “Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field.” In Circulation of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic Field, edited by Rafael Schögler, 9–28. Berlin: Peter Lang. , 9). Yet, as Simon has pointed out, the fact that the author was dependent on the translator does in practice not necessarily cede power to the translator in the relationship (Simon 1996Simon, Sherry 1996 Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London: Routledge., 75, 79). The rare documents that chronicle the relationships between male authors and women translators reveal a “relationship where the unequal positions of writer and translator are intensified by their gendered identities” (71). A similar conclusion can be drawn for the relationship between the publisher and the translator. The documentary traces left by relationships between publishers and translators have been studied even more rarely. To a certain degree the translator’s credentials lend symbolic capital to the publisher. The symbolic capital of having a good translator can be valuable currency for the publisher, sometimes even outweighing a competitor’s better financial offer in the competition for translation rights (Reisinger 2021Reisinger, Carmen 2021 Schachzüge im translatorischen Feld: Zur Rezeption von Alejo Carpentier im deutschsprachigen Verlagswesen [Chess moves in the field of translation: On the reception of Alejo Carpentier by German-language publishing houses]. Berlin: Verlag Walter Frey., 92–96). Even though Scholl argues that “the space created between the original author and the employer/publisher becomes a place of mediatory power for the translator” (Scholl 2011Scholl, Lesa 2011 Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate., 66), I would point out that Simon’s observation about unequal and gendered power relations certainly applies to Bell and Schmitz.

An author Schmitz translated twice was the German scholar of English language and literature Karl Elze. In his area of research, it made sense to extend the reach of his output to English-speaking readers. Elze had proposed a book project to the publisher Macmillan through the reputable German-born but England-based scholar Max Müller.99.BL, Add MS 55394 vol. 2, f. 827, Alexander Macmillan to Karl Elze, 18 December 1873. Elze had published various essays on Shakespeare in German, and now wanted to publish a selection of them for English readers. Throughout the publication process, Elze corresponded both with Schmitz and with Alexander Macmillan. He sent Schmitz the source texts, which he had revised for the translation, one after the other. She translated and forwarded the English texts to the publisher, who then forwarded them to Elze, so that he would be able to look at the result.1010.BL, Add MS 55394 vol. 2, f. 855, Alexander Macmillan to Karl Elze, 24 December 1873. Elze later also wanted his Shakespeare biography translated into English. He visited the Schmitz household in England, where he was given the address of George Bell and Sons, who would eventually take on the book after Elze had for years tried to find a publisher.1111.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/345/200, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 21 June 1886. Elze had very concrete ideas about what the English publication should look like, and he refused to compromise. Schmitz reported parts of her correspondence with Elze to Edward Bell:

I have been rather worried by Dr. Elze about this translation of his “Shakespeare” which he has lately taken to call “that unfortunate translation[”]. Otherwise I should have remembered that you did not like the motto on his title-page. I myself do not like it at all where it is […]. When I told Dr. E. that you wished it on the reverse side of the page or on the opposite page — if anywhere, Dr. E. said he would rather have it away altogether than not placed as he had [done]. — But now that you have expressed your wish so strongly about the matter, I propose that the motto be left away altogether […] The work is your publication & must be done as you wish it.1212.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/158/259, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 20 April 1888. I render quotations from archival material in their original formatting (underlining, etc.).

Elze was also displeased with the cuts Schmitz suggested when the publisher decided that the biography was too long to be published unabridged. The “emotional management” of the author (Childress 2017Childress, Clayton 2017 Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press., 76) fell to Schmitz. She mediated between him and the publisher. In a letter to Bell she quoted Elze, who had written: “I also hope that in the meantime you will have come to the conclusion that the book allows of no abridgment or curtailing without being seriously damaged or spoilt altogether, and I wish you would say so to Mr Bell […].”1313.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/221/251, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 29 June 1889. Schmitz repeatedly expressed her loyalty towards the publisher: “If he has been worried about his book, it has not been my fault or yours,” or: “Enclosed is the reply [by] Dr. Elze, which I think will amuse you.”1414.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/221/255, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, n.d. It is clear that Schmitz wanted to maintain a good business relationship with Bell in the long term. Unfortunately, no letters between Schmitz and Elze seem to be extant, which would have allowed comparison.

Schmitz wanted her name to carry a guarantee for translational quality. She would rather not be named as the translator at all, than be associated with a low-quality product. Concerning Goethe’s Miscellaneous Travels (1882Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 1882 Goethe’s Works. Vol. XI. — Miscellaneous Travels, Including Letters from Switzerland, Campaign in France, Liege, Mainz, and Rhine Tour. Edited by Dora Schmitz. Translated by Dora Schmitz and others. London: George Bell and Sons.) she wrote to Bell:

I spoke to my father about revising Farie’s translation […]. [He] seems to think that my suggestions are almost all necessary and that to let my name appear as editor of an incorrect translation is not wise. He has advised me therefore to write to you to propose rather to do the whole myself […]. If you still think that merely a little alteration of Farie’s version is all you want, it could appear without my name.1515.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/243/389, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 17 August 1881.

What we further see in the above quote, and in other letters, is that Schmitz used her renowned father’s opinion to support her arguments. She employed the same strategy in another instance where she disapproved of alterations Bell had suggested: “I have consulted with my good father on several points & he thinks I am right, so you will find that I have re-altered several passages.”1616.University of Reading, Special Collections, MS 1640/345/198, L. Dora Schmitz to Edward Bell, 26 May 1888.

Fathers who had a strong interest in their daughters’ education and achievements could be crucial for the careers of historical women scientists (Abir-Am and Outram 1989Abir-Am, Pnina G., and Dorinda Outram 1989 “Introduction.” In Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1979, edited by Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, 1–16. London: Rutgers University Press., 15; Healy 2004Healy, Michelle 2004 The Cachet of the ‘Invisible’ Translator: Englishwomen Translating Science (1650–1850). PhD thesis. University of Ottawa., 54). A “personalized patronage situation” (Abir-Am and Outram 1989Abir-Am, Pnina G., and Dorinda Outram 1989 “Introduction.” In Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1979, edited by Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, 1–16. London: Rutgers University Press., 4) with a “progressive male mentor who [had] liberated himself from prevailing gender prejudice” (9) could help women access male-dominated science. In Schmitz’s case, the father was an advisor and reference point for the woman translator, while at the same time restricting her decision-making power. During his lifetime Leonhard kept a watchful eye on her occupation. At least concerning questions of propriety, he had strong opinions on what his unmarried daughter should or should not translate. In 1881 he informed the author Wolfgang Kirchbach that, during a period in which he had been absent, Dora had tried to find an English publisher for Kirchbach’s novel, but without success. Notwithstanding he added on closing his letter: “I cannot advise my daughter to take on a translation of your Salvator Rosa because it contains passages that go beyond the horizon of a young girl.”1717.SLUB Dresden, Mscr.Dresd.p,Abt.B,4138, Leonhard Schmitz to Wolfgang Kirchbach, 22 September 1881. My translation of the German “[…] meiner Tochter kann ich nicht wohl anrathen eine Uebersetzung Ihres Salvator Rosa zu übernehmen weil sich Stellen darin befinden die über den Horizont eines jungen Mädchens gehen.” The letter is written in the handwriting of Dora, who was thirty-six at the time. Her father apparently dictated the letter to her.

Bunnètt seems to have had a long-standing work relationship with Smith and Elder, similar to Schmitz with Bell and Sons. Unfortunately, no letters between her and the publishers seem to have survived. Unlike the critic Elze, who had to go to great lengths to secure English publishers for his work, the then popular writer Berthold Auerbach could sometimes even pick and choose. In her correspondence with Auerbach, Bunnètt repeatedly insists on Smith and Elder as a publication venue for her translations of his work, and offers advice on alternative publishers, also with an eye to remuneration. To cite examples from different letters:

I think Smith & Elder would be glad to take it, and they would pay better than Tauchnitz.

Smith & Elder are to be relied on. […] I am quite sure that if Smith & Elder do not take it, we might offer it to Bentley with some hope of success.

Could you not try Bentley — he has repeatedly expressed a wish that I should translate something for him & he was sorry not to have been the publisher of your “On the [Heights]”.1818.DLA, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to Berthold Auerbach, Z3151/1, 26 June [1867]; Z3151/2, [ca. June 1867]; Z3151/5, 8 October [1867].

Bunnètt wanted to translate Auerbach’s story collection Zur guten Stunde ‘At the good hour’ and have it published by Smith and Elder. Smith and Elder preferred not to acquire more than 100 illustrations of the richly illustrated German volumes. Bunnètt asked Auerbach whether he was willing to have his work printed only as a selection with the corresponding 100 illustrations and asked for the price. After Auerbach did not respond, she wrote again, “half afraid my last letter may not have reached you,” reminding him: “I wish to be able to set to work as soon as I receive it, & I have many other things in prospect.”1919.DLA, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to Berthold Auerbach, Z 3151/3, 5 August [1867]. This time, Auerbach replied. The letter is worth quoting at some length:

Dear Madam!

In order to relieve you of any disquiet, I will answer you immediately. I received your earlier letter, […] but I didn’t know how to respond […] because it didn’t contain anything specific. Today things are different. For now Smith and Elder want 100 illustrations with accompanying text. I can’t give you a definite answer to this today either, because (this is said with the strictest discretion) there are negotiations with Sampson Low in London and Tauchnitz in Leipzig, who would like to undertake the illustrated book of tales together. Until I hear anything definitive from there, I cannot tell you anything definitive concerning Smith and Elder. […]

In the meantime, however, my opinion is that you begin to translate immediately because even if we do not agree with Smith and Elder but with Tauchnitz, I will propose your translation.

Of course I can’t promise anything definite concerning this either, but you certainly have priority, being experienced in translating and also because your [by then] prepared and already existing translation makes it possible for the book to be published in English still before Christmas.2020.DLA, Berthold Auerbach to Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt, Z 3151/3, 6 August 1867. My translation of the German: “Hochgeehrtes Fraeulein! Um Sie von jeder Unruhe zu befreien antworte ich Ihnen sofort. Ich habe Ihren früheren Brief erhalten, […] ich wusste aber auf Ihren Brief gar nichts Bestimmtes zu antworten, da er nichts bestimmtes [sic] enthielt. Heute ist das nun anders. Shmith [sic] und Elder wünschten nun vorlaeufig 100 Illustrationen mit dazugehoerigem Texte. Ich kann Ihnen auch heute hierauf noch nichts Bestimmtes antworten, denn (dies sei zur strengsten Discretion mitgetheilt) es bestehen Unterhandlungen mit Sampson Low in London und Tauchnitz in Leipzig, die gemeinsam das illustrierte Volksbuch unternehmen moegen. Bevor ich von dort Definitives erfahre, kann ich Ihnen resp. Shmith [sic] and Elder nichts Festes sagen. […] Meine Ansicht ist indess, dass Sie sofort zu übersetzen beginnen, denn wenn wir uns auch nicht mit Smith und Elder vereinbaren, sondern mit Tauchnitz, so werde ich die Annahme Ihrer Uebersetzung vorschlagen. Natürlich kann ich hierüber nichts Festes versprechen, doch haben Sie gewiss den Vorrang als bewaerhrt in Uebersetzungen und auch dadurch, dass durch Ihre vorbereitete und bereits vorhandene Uebesetzung die Moeglichkeit gegeben ist das Buch in englischer Sprache noch zu Weihnachten erscheinen zu lassen.”

Auerbach negotiated with Tauchnitz, the publisher Bunnètt advised against, and proposed that she would translate the entire book, just in case the publishers Auerbach would eventually decide on would also be willing to take her translation. The phrase “Gehen Sie also frisch an die Arbeit” ‘So get to work at once’ which Auerbach added directly after the section quoted above, suggests an idea of translating as light and easy feminine work. Apparently, negotiations with Smith and Elder failed, as did negotiations with Richard Bentley.2121.DLA, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to Berthold Auerbach, Z3151/6, 19 September [1867]; Richard Bentley to Berthold Auerbach, 16 September 1867; Berthold Auerbach to Richard Bentley, n.d. The sentence “Gehen Sie also frisch an die Arbeit” is difficult to translate without losing its connotations. In the end The “Good Hour;” or Evening Holiday was published by George Routledge and Sons, most likely because they were willing to print 250 illustrations — a matter of priority to the author. The translation was done by Henry William Dulcken.

Bunnètt was also a researcher. In the preface to her biography of Countess Louise Juliana of Nassau (1576–1644), Louise Juliane, Electress Palatine and Her Times (1861), she tells her readers where she did her library and archival research. She used her extended stays in Germany to network with scholars. It is not unlikely that she already had the goal of finding interesting works to translate when she set out for Germany. As with other translators (Pickford 2012Pickford, Susan 2012 “Writing with ‘Manly Vigour’: Translational Agency in Two Early Nineteenth-Century English Translations of François Pouqueville’s Voyage en Morée, à Constantinople et en Albanie (1805).” In Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750–1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender, edited by Alison E. Martin and Susan Pickford, 198–217. New York: Routledge., 212), her contacts constituted social capital she could operate with:

I have sought materials among the MSS. and Royal Archives at Heidelberg and Munich […] I have consulted many Continental writers whose works have at present no extensive sale in this country. […] It is superfluous to add, that during my researches at home, I received every courtesy and assistance from the gentlemen in charge of our National Manuscripts and Collections. I feel it, however, due to those who aided me with their advice and assistance in a foreign land, here to tender to them […] my acknowledgements […]. To Professors Gervinus, Häusser, and Halm; to Herr von Sybel, the Professor of History at Munich University; to Professor Delffs, under whose roof I passed so many pleasant weeks at Heidelberg; to all and each of my kind German friends; […].(Bunnètt 1862Bunnètt, Fanny Elizabeth 1862 Louise Juliane, Electress Palatine and Her Times. London: James Nisbet and Co., v, viii)

German universities were prestigious focal points of knowledge and learning. Already in the 1820s and 1830s, the superiority and dominance of German scholars in humanities subjects became a widely accepted fact in Britain (Davis 2007Davis, John R. 2007 The Victorians and Germany. Bern: Peter Lang., 89, 257, 267). Especially from the 1860s onwards, many eminent British thinkers and critics learned German and observed developments in German research (Ashton 1980Ashton, Rosemary 1980 The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 177; Davis 2007Davis, John R. 2007 The Victorians and Germany. Bern: Peter Lang., 89, 98, 255–257, 262). Bunnètt’s preface might have been a graceful expression of honesty and intellectual generosity. At the same time, she must have been aware that the professors’ symbolic capital could rub off on her. She adorned herself with connections to prestigious (male) scholars, and often referred to their credentials and authority, even when it did not seem absolutely necessary. To cite from the preface to her book on etymology she wrote for children:

The ideas have no claim to originality: they have been taken from the best writers on the subject; and the author has been greatly indebted for much valuable assistance to the Rev. Dr White, late Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford, and Editor of the “Ormulum.”(Bunnètt 1856Bunnètt, Fanny Elizabeth 1856 Etymology Made Easy: Being Familiar Conversations of the Derivation and Meaning of Some Words in Common Use. London: James Nisbet and Co., n.p.)

Employing a well-known modest feminine tone, Bunnètt aimed to increase the perceived value of her publications by transferring the symbolic capital of other scholars onto herself — similar to what an authorised translation would have achieved. At the time, the institutional prestige Dr White brought with him was reserved for men. Only from 1920 onwards would women be able to receive degrees from Oxford (First Women at Oxford n.d.First Women at Oxford n.d. “Women at Oxford: 1878–1920.” Accessed April 11, 2024. https://​www​.firstwomenatoxford​.ox​.ac​.uk). Quite unlike the translators in Stark’s monograph, she was a woman translator who aimed, to use Roig-Sanz’s and Meylaerts’s words, “to reach [her] own consecration” (2018Roig-Sanz, Diana, and Reine Meylaerts 2018 “General Introduction: Literary Translation and Cultural Mediators. Toward an Agent- and Process-Oriented Approach.” In Literary Translation and Cultural Mediators in ‘Peripheral’ Cultures: Customs Officers or Smugglers? edited by Diana Roig-Sanz and Reine Meylaerts, 1–37. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. , 19).

However, in the case of the preface to Louise Juliane, Bunnèt’s strategy did not work flawlessly. Women writers were frequently discussed condescendingly by critics, which was one of the reasons why they often chose to publish anonymously (Poovey 1984Poovey, Mary 1984 The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 39). The reviewer of Bunnètt’s Louise Juliane in the Athenaeum apparently thought that women had no business writing books, let alone writing biographies of other women. The reviewer repeats the words ‘courtesy’ and ‘researches’ again and again, mimicking the first few sentences of Bunnètt’s preface, as if to suggest that research done by a woman could only be an inferior version of actual research (The Athenaeum 1862The Athenaeum 1862 “Louise Juliane, Electress Palatine, and Her Times. By Fanny Elizabeth Bunnett.” April 5.). Asserting linguistic and scholarly competence as a woman could provoke social sanctions, but so could the display of traditionally feminine virtues in conjunction with such an assertion of competence. Bunnètt did not shy away from a polite and subjective style of writing that would have been labelled as — apparently provocatively — feminine. She often wrote unapologetically from her own experiences, by no means avoiding the stigma that equates femininity with a subjective point of view. She turned a stereotypical image into a source of strength (Poovey 1984Poovey, Mary 1984 The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press., xi). A good illustration of this can be found in her preface to Gervinus’s Shakespeare Commentaries, in which she states that translating the book under the author’s supervision “has led me more and more deeply to appreciate the views it unfolds, and the personal advantage and enjoyment I have derived from their consideration, will I trust be shared by many readers” (Gervinus 1863Gervinus, Georg Gottfried 1863 Shakespeare Commentaries. Translated under the Author’s Superintendence by F. E. Bunnètt. London: Smith and Elder., viii). Neither did she shy away from using the words ‘I’ and ‘me’ repeatedly when she told her readers in the preface to her translation of Alfred von Wolzogen’s Raphael Santi about the process of selecting the text:

Having translated Grimm’s ‘Life of Michael Angelo,’ I was desirous of finding some memoir of his great contemporary Raphael, which might complete the picture we already possess of a period so rich in the history of art.

It was not easy to meet with a work which was not too diffuse in its art-criticisms for the ordinary reader, and until Wolzogen’s ‘Life of Raphael’ appeared, there was no concise biography of the great painter which seemed to me to supply the information required.

It is for this reason that I have translated the work; […].(Von Wolzogen 1866Von Wolzogen, Alfred 1866 Raphael Santi, His Life and His Works. Translated by F. E. Bunnètt. London: Smith and Elder., n.p.)

Her subjective positioning projects confidence. Her readers are able to and indeed ought to read the book because she determined it was good enough. What is more, she describes how she provides a scholarly audience with research otherwise unavailable to them. Targeting ‘ordinary readers’ who were ignorant of German, the task of translating has the same result as doing research herself: she has filled a gap in the literature.

The example of Ueber Shakspeare’s dramatische Kunst und sein Verhältniß zu Calderon und Göthe ‘On Shakespeare’s dramatic art and his relationship to Calderón and Goethe’ (1839) by the German philosopher and critic Hermann Ulrici shows, in neat comparison to a non-authorised translation earlier in the period, how the involvement of the author gave him more control over the shape his work assumed abroad. Schmitz retranslated Ulrici’s book in 1876Ulrici, Hermann 1876 Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art: History and Character of Shakspeare’s Plays. From the Third Edition of the German, with Additions and Corrections by the Author. Translated by Dora Schmitz. London: George Bell and Sons., “with Additions and Corrections by the Author.” It had first been translated in 1846 by the cleric Alexander James William Morrison. Morrison’s preface was rather critical, suggesting that the book missed its very aim, and even that readers might come up with a more worthwhile product themselves:

The present work […] attempts to discover the leading ideas which Shakspeare may have had before him in the composition of his plays. Many, perhaps, who will be disposed to question the successfulness of the attempt, may be led by it to more felicitous essays of their own.(Ulrici 1846Ulrici, Hermann 1846 Shakspeare’s Dramatic Art, and His Relation to Calderon and Goethe. London: Chapman, Brothers., iv)

The author himself, Ulrici, who would become the head of the German Shakespeare Society, was competent in English and even tried to initiate collaboration with scholars in England.2222.Trinity College Cambridge, Add. MS a.214/1, Hermann Ulrici to William Whewell, 13 July 1852. In addition, he published a revised and extended edition of his work in 1868/1869. Morrison’s translation was surely not how he wanted his work to circulate in Britain, especially since it was now outdated as well. Ulrici’s preface to Schmitz’s new translation shows that the result pleased him this time: “I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks and acknowledgments to the translator and to the publishers. The translation, I think, is executed with greater fidelity and a more correct understanding than that of other similar works” (Ulrici 1876Ulrici, Hermann 1846 Shakspeare’s Dramatic Art, and His Relation to Calderon and Goethe. London: Chapman, Brothers., xi).

In Victorian England, becoming a translator was in some ways less compatible with the duties of a wife or mother than working as a fictional author. The linguistic competence required to successfully translate demanding texts could often only be achieved by travelling abroad (Stark 2006Stark, Susanne 2006 “Women.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 4, 1790–1900, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 128; see also Hughes 2022Hughes, Linda 2022 Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 2–3). Beyond the purpose of language acquisition, Bunnètt travelled frequently in connection to her translation and research. Her translation of the historian and literary critic Georg Gottfried Gervinus, which was labelled as “translated under the author’s supervision,” required her to temporarily relocate to the author’s home. Without the personal acquaintance with the translator, Gervinus’s work might have never appeared in English at all.

Sometime after Bunnètt and Gervinus had met during Bunnètt’s stay in Heidelberg, where she was doing research for Louise Juliane, Gervinus informed his Leipzig-based German publisher Wilhelm Engelmann about his plan to publish an English translation of his volume of criticism Shakespeare (1849/1850, revised ed. 1862) with a publisher in London.2323.Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Heid. Hs. 2525, 94, 234, Wilhelm Engelmann to G. G. Gervinus, 22 January 1861. As my research in archives has shown, the translation was commissioned, revised, and printed in Germany. Bunnètt tried to place the work with an English publisher while working on the translation. Her efforts were unsuccessful.2424.A remaining example of a letter by Bunnètt containing a proposal is the one to John Murray, deposited in the archive of the National Library of Scotland. National Library of Scotland, MS.40168 folios 1–2, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to John Murray, 23 March 1861. Engelmann would eventually print the English translation in Leipzig himself. Bunnètt was invited back to Heidelberg, where she stayed under Gervinus’s roof for six weeks to revise her draft of the translation together with him. For two months afterwards she stayed in accommodation the publisher and his family had organised for her in Leipzig. There, she read over the proofs while the volumes were being printed, and she sent out letters to publishers based in Britain. Bunnètt, and possibly also Engelmann, asked a number of publishers if they would want to take on the book and disseminate it in Britain. The venture was successful in the end. The information about the publisher and place of publication on the title page, Smith and Elder in London, is therefore only partly correct. Smith and Elder merely purchased a number of copies.2525.Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Heid. Hs 2525, Wilhelm Engelmann to G. G. Gervinus, 94, 240, 24 July 1861; 94, 251, 7 February 1862; 94, 262, 29 July 1862; 94, 263, 11 August 1862; 94, 264, 14 August 1862; 94, 268, 1 November 1862; 94, 269, 26 November 1862. Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Heid. Hs 2525, 94, 265, Theodor Engelmann to G. G. Gervinus, 22 August 1862.

The label attached to the target text, “translated under the superintendence of the author,” is remarkable but not unique. In the same period, the translator Elizabeth Sabine (1807–1879) published almost all of her translations under the “superintendence” not of the original author, but of her husband, the prominent scientist Edward Sabine (Healy 2004Healy, Michelle 2004 The Cachet of the ‘Invisible’ Translator: Englishwomen Translating Science (1650–1850). PhD thesis. University of Ottawa., 267, 274; Martin and Pickford 2012Martin, Alison E., and Susan Pickford 2012 “Introduction.” In Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750–1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender, edited by Alison E. Martin and Susan Pickford, 1–24. New York: Routledge., 17; Martin 2020Martin, Alison E. 2020 Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press., 161, 199). The only exception was an authorised translation of Ansichten der Natur ‘Views of nature’ by German scientist Wilhelm von Humboldt, which was published “with the Author’s sanction and co-operation, and at his express desire” (Martin 2020Martin, Alison E. 2020 Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press., 165). In the case of Bunnètt’s translation of Gervinus, the entire process from commissioning to distributing the translation was a collaborative effort between author, translator, and both publishers. Shakespeare Commentaries can be considered an example of collaborative translation, given the systematic planning of the joint project and the proximity of parties in the initial creation of the translation (see Cordingley and Frigau Manning 2017Cordingley, Anthony, and Céline Frigau Manning 2017 “What is Collaborative Translation?” In Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age, edited by Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning, 1–30. London: Bloomsbury., 4, 24). It is generally assumed that, in the humanities, the selection of books for translation largely depends on the symbolic capital of the source text author (Schögler 2018Schögler, Rafael Y. 2018 “Translation in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Circulating and Canonizing Knowledge.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 38: 62–90., 63). Yet, in this case, in spite of Gervinus’s reputation as a Shakespeare critic, the idea of a translation could only be realised because the source culture agents initiated it, and because they knew a translator for the task.

On the day before Bunnètt’s return to England, Engelmann reported: “It will be a very distressed farewell since the women have become inseparable. Projects to see one another again soon, here or in London, have already been discussed.”2626.My translation of: “Es wird ein sehr erregter Abschied werden, da die Frauen mit großer Liebe aneinander gehangen haben. Projekte auf baldiges Wiedersehen hier oder in London sind ebenfalls schon besprochen worden.” Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Wilhelm Engelmann to G. G. Gervinus, Heid. Hs. 2525, 94, 269, 26 November 1862. Bunnètt often made friends with the wives and daughters of the authors she translated for. She sometimes sought these female acquaintances and friendships eagerly, as this self-deprecating letter from her to Auerbach shows:

I am quite sorry for the trouble I have caused in bringing Frau Auerbach & your daughter to the steamer through that fearful storm, & I am especially sorry to have missed seeing them. It would have given me great pleasure to have made their acquaintance, & I will be less stupid another time.2727.DLA, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to Berthold Auerbach, Z3151/2, [ca. July 1867].

Literary English women had already networked with German women earlier in the century, building circles of intellectual and social exchange which helped their professional pursuits (Hughes 2022Hughes, Linda 2022 Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 3, 7, 9, 67, 69, 78). If they preferred to interact with other women rather than men, their experiences of visits in Germany differed accordingly: the prominent writer and translator Anna Jameson, for example, experienced a “woman-centred Germany” (Hughes 2022Hughes, Linda 2022 Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 12). Even if Bunnètt genuinely enjoyed making friends with other women,2828.Engelmann wrote: “Particularly my wife and daughter have befriended Miss Bunnett, and, as far as I can see, they get along very cordially; she has won us over through her lovely nature, when she is not busy she is almost our daily guest.” My translation of “Meine Frau und Tochter besonders haben sich der Miss Bunnett auf das Freundlichste angenommen und so viel ich sehe, verstehen sie sich auf das Herzlichste; sie hat Alle durch ihr liebenswürdiges Wesen gewonnen, wenn sie nicht beschäftigt ist, ist sie beinahe unser täglicher Gast.” Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Wilhelm Engelmann to G. G. Gervinus, Heid. Hs. 2525, 94, 266, 23 September 1862. Another example is Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, DE-611-HS-1699025, Fanny Elisabeth Bunnètt [to Karl Felix Halm], 13 January 1862. she was also a skilled networker. Contemporary moralists described a woman’s emotional responsiveness as the most fundamental female characteristic (Poovey 1984Poovey, Mary 1984 The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 18). It seems that Bunnètt used her capacity for female friendship as a strength that would enable her to acquire and keep authors she wanted to translate. Professional networking and genuine private relationships do not exclude one another (Powell 1985Powell, Walter W. 1985 Getting into Print: The Decision-Making Process in Scholarly Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 90–91), and making close friends with the female relatives of authors would not have been appropriate for a nineteenth-century male translator. I argue, therefore, that within Bunnètt’s historical context this networking strategy is a specifically female one. I cite one more example from a letter she sent to the theologian Eduard Zeller:

My dear Sir: I see by the Athenaeum that you are preparing a Life of Strauss for publication. May I ask for permission to translate it, if my publisher is willing to publish it? I presume I am writing to the Prof. Zeller I knew in Heidelberg. If so, may I ask you to remember me most kindly to Frau Zeller.

[…]

I am not quite sure that you reside in Berlin — I will therefore direct this letter to the care of Prof. Helmholtz.2929.Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Nachlass Eduard Zeller, Md 747–793, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to Eduard Zeller, 16 May, n.y.

First, to secure that her request will be attended to, Bunnètt reminds Zeller that they met in person. Second, she has the letter delivered by the renowned and influential scientist Hermann Helmholtz, which would certainly have made an impression.3030.Helmholtz was for some twelve years a professor at Heidelberg too (Williams n.d.Williams, L. Pearce n.d. “Hermann von Helmholtz: German Scientist and Philosopher.” Accessed November 17, 2023. https://​www​.britannica​.com​/biography​/Hermann​-von​-Helmholtz). Third, Bunnètt may have wanted to fulfil expectations of socialising with female family members of the author. In addition, the reminder that she is friends with the addressee’s wife, Emilie Zeller, would have made it more difficult for the husband to brush her off. It might have also given her a sense of security to have contact with the wife.3131.Her translation of Zeller’s biography of David Friedrich Strauss was ‘authorised’, but anonymous — perhaps for the same reason that George Eliot translated Strauss himself anonymously: Strauss and his school were viewed as heretics in some theological circles (Stark 1999Stark, Susanne 1999 ‘Behind Inverted Commas’: Translation and Anglo–German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters., 109).

It is possible that Bunnètt’s female networking strategies erased traces about her for the modern-day researcher. Gervinus’s widow, who remained close friends with Bunnètt, might have kept her letters for herself. In that way, her gender would have indirectly been an additional reason why the translator’s correspondence did not survive. There remain only two letters by Bunnètt in Georg Gottfried Gervinus’s archive at Heidelberg University Library: they are two rather short notes sent to Victoria Gervinus directly after her husband’s death.3232.The letters by Bunnètt to V. Gervinus are addressed to “dearest V.” and signed with “Your loving F.E.B.” Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Nachlass Gervinus, Heid. Hs. 2565, 20, 1–2, Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt to Victoria Gervinus, [March 1871].

4.Conclusion

Several studies have focused on women translators’ textual interventions, demonstrating their creative contributions despite social conventions that have often tended to sanction more overt forms of female literary creation and professional assertion. The professional strategies of more ‘faithful’ women translators should be given the attention they deserve. Authorised translations lend themselves to the exploration of translators’ agency, as translators not only had to interact with the publishers, but often also with the authors and other participants in the mediation process. Scholars need to turn to archival research to explore aspects of historical women translators’ agency beyond textual choices. From a gender perspective, in the Victorian period, authorised translations meant that the author’s stamp of approval was supposed to enhance the value of the final product in the eyes of prospective readers. Behind the scenes, the author’s involvement in various steps of the process between selection and publication of a translation meant that his interests had to be taken into account, which in some cases were in conflict with the translator’s own best interests. Within a mode of publication that sometimes posed constraints, Bunnètt and Schmitz followed their own agendas and negotiated their professional work with publishers and authors in order to achieve their goals. Both translators strategically selected their networks at home and abroad in a way that blurred the separation between public and private (Eger et al. 2001Eger, Elizabeth, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton 2001 “Introduction: Women, Writing and Representation.” In Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830, edited by Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 3; Tomaselli 2001Tomaselli, Sylvana 2001 “The Most Public Sphere of All: The Family.” In Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830, edited by Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton, 239–256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), and by referring to their contacts when it was beneficial to their own credentials. Bunnètt in particular employed traditionally feminine modes of behaviour as networking strategies to her advantage. Schmitz’s strategy of building a publicly recognizable name for herself as a competent translator both of scholarly works and of literary fiction provides an important counterexample to the nineteenth-century women translators Stark describes (1999Stark, Susanne 1999 ‘Behind Inverted Commas’: Translation and Anglo–German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.). She made sure her name would lend her translations what Healy calls a distinct “cachet” (2004Healy, Michelle 2004 The Cachet of the ‘Invisible’ Translator: Englishwomen Translating Science (1650–1850). PhD thesis. University of Ottawa., 14, 285–286), functioning like a brand, based solely on her work as a translator. Naturally, the specific linguistic, social and historical contexts must be taken into consideration when analysing individual case studies. For example, Germany allowed middle-class women to move and interact more freely (Hughes 2022Hughes, Linda 2022 Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 7), which would presumably have increased, and certainly influenced, the possibilities for networking with male scholars, as in the case of the two unmarried and childless British translators Bunnètt and Schmitz.

The two case studies here have shown that the more immediate context is relevant for the interpretation of archival correspondence too. This context is shaped by the gender of the participants in the translation event. When digging for a historical translator’s specific personality and identity (Bardet 2021Bardet, Mary 2021 “Literary Detection in the Archives: Revealing Jeanne Heywood (1856–1909).” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 41–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), one should not forget that “there is no substantial, pre-existing self, and individual subjectivity is formed in practices situated within networks” (Cordingley and Frigau Manning 2017Cordingley, Anthony, and Céline Frigau Manning 2017 “What is Collaborative Translation?” In Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age, edited by Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning, 1–30. London: Bloomsbury., 13). Therefore, considering the social and situational embeddedness of correspondence that remains in archives is crucial, in particular with regard to gender. Networking and interpersonal relationships are gendered, and they certainly were in the Victorian period. As ‘authorised’ women translators moving within male-dominated spaces, Bunnètt and Schmitz had to consciously take the gender of their contacts into account, utilizing typically ‘feminine’ strategies to their advantage.