Madame Bovary. Provincial Manners. Translated from the French Édition Définitive by Eleanor Marx-Aveling.

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

First English edition. 8vo. xxii, 383, [32, adverts] pp., with six plates (including the frontispiece). Original blue-green cloth, front cover lettered in black flanked by a gilt decorative band and cherubs, further floral bands with central roundels to the head and foot, spine lettered in gilt, rear cover with blind stamped publisher's monograph within triple blind fillet border, edges untrimmed. London, Vizetelly & Co.

A seminal work of nineteenth century literature, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Karl Marx's daughter, and with a long and insightful introduction by her.

An English translation of Madame Bovary is said to have been attempted as early 1857 by Julie Herbert, the governess to Flaubert's own niece, but a willing publisher in Britain was never found and the manuscript has been lost to history. The first English translation appeared in America in 1881, published in Philadelphia and translated by Mary Neal Sherwood, a prolific American translator of French and Russian literature who generally published her translations under the pseudonym John Stirling.

The Eleanor Marx translation was therefore the first English edition to be printed in Britain. Although it was preceded by this earlier American effort, 'Eleanor Marx’s translation of Madame Bovary has endured like none other', forming the basis of many succeeding editions (Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability, p. 563).

Small engraved bookplate of 'Ernest Pearce' to front pastedown with a few neat pencilled marginal annotations signed 'E.P.' Spine ever so slightly dulled, two small marks to front cover, extremities lightly rubbed, some very faint spotting to edges of text block and first two leaves, otherwise an excellent copy.

Stock Code: 241765