Overview

Through case studies of émigré literary translators and editors, this open access book traces how Russian literature kindled the American imagination in the 20th century. In the 19th century, American literature was invaded by great Russian novels, including the works of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky, and others, all mediated, translated, and sometimes even discovered by devoted freelance translators like Isabel Hapgood, Leo Wiener, and Nathan Haskell Dole. Throughout the 1900s these translators made Russian literature, from Nobel prizewinners like Solzhenitsyn to obscure émigrés like Mark Aldanov, accessible to American readers. Some literary translators were also publishers, like Nicholas Wreden (1901-55), at different times a bookseller at Scribner’s, an editor at E.P. Dutton and a publishing executive at Little, Brown. His style was so well-regarded that Hemingway wished he wrote in Russian so that Wreden could translate him. He was also a lumberjack, a trainee naval officer and an émigré who fled Russia in 1920 to become a naturalized American citizen. Uniquely, as a translator and as a publisher, Wreden helped determine which Russian novels the American public would read. This book tells Wreden’s story. It also reconstructs, using archival sources, the lives of other extraordinary translator-publishers like Thomas Seltzer, Bernard Guilbert Guerney, and Carl Proffer, who, with his wife Ellendea, ran Ardis Publishers, the firm that brought Soviet writing to the US. Invading the American Canon tells the history of the translation of Russian literature in America and its changing critical reception over a hundred turbulent years. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by a European Research Council Horizon 2020 Starting Grant (grant agreement no. 802437)

Full Product Details

Author:   Professor or Dr. Muireann Maguire (University of Exeter, UK) ,  Professor Brian James Baer (Kent State University, USA) ,  Dr. Michelle Woods
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic USA
ISBN:  

9798765121917

Pages:   192
Publication Date:   02 October 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Notes on Transliteration, Citation, and Referencing Introduction: Russian and American Literature in the Twentieth Century Introduction: Fraternal twins Methodology: Translator studies Introducing Nicholas Wreden ‘Gorki at Coney Island’: A critical overview ‘A Great Treasure’: Russian literature as intellectual and aesthetic capital Conclusion 1. The Taming of the Arts: Publishing Russian Literature in America to 1935 ‘The great Autocracy and the great Republic’ The earliest American translators: Schuyler and his successors Schuyler’s translations: ‘More Or Less Clumsily Englished’ ‘Fragments of a foreign feast’: Translation at the turn of the nineteenth century Hapgood and Dole: ‘Cobbling Extraordinary’ Hapgood and Gorky: ‘rather strong meat’ Aline Delano and Korolenko: ‘comparatively, no sense of humor’ Thomas Seltzer: ‘a tiny Jew, but trustworthy’ Conclusion: Ram them! 2. Unmaking A Russian: The Rise of Nicholas Wreden Unmaking a Russian, Making an American “Go Into The Book Business!” Wreden as book traveler Adventures in the retail trade: Wreden the bookstore manager ‘A big job to do during the next couple of years’: Wreden on committees ‘An invaluable member of this organization’: Wreden as editor Wreden and Russophone cultural networks Conclusion: Greeting ghosts 3. To Live As We Wish: Nicholas Wreden as Translator Introduction: ‘a staggering amount’ Soviet sex crime: The reception of Dog Lane on both sides of the Pacific ‘Gremlins in their Kremlins’: The Fifth Seal scandal Gazdanov and The Specter of Alexander Wolf Conclusion 4. I’ll Never Go Back: Russian-Americans in Translation and Publishing Introduction: A constellation of translators Boris Brasol: ‘a red rag to all Jewish readers’ John Cournos: ‘unaccountable predilections’ A World May End: Irina Skariatina ‘An Unfortunate Case of Versatility’: The adventures of Bernard Guilbert Guerney ‘I Think Every Good American Should Have A Book’: Bookstore owner and publisher “I hope the nail on your big toe dies of small pox”: Guerney’s career as translator and anthologist ‘Kid Pasternak’ and the ‘Zhivago job’ Conclusion 5. For Thee The Best: Ardis, and a Different Kind of Ardor Introduction: On the Soviet literary front The foundation of Ardis Probably the greatest poets of the century: the translation of Mandel’shtam, Brodsky, and Sokolov Carl Proffer: ‘On the whole, with accuracy’ A “complex phenomenon”: Ardis and its achievements Conclusion: Wheelchair basketball Conclusion: Through the Years Two deaths Index

Reviews

This is a ground-breaking study of the forces that brought Russian literature to the American public. Maguire takes her readers behind the scenes, introducing a cast of diverse, unforgettable characters: writers, translators, editors, publishers, agents, booksellers, critics, and scholars. Sometimes collaborating, sometimes clashing, they navigated daunting obstacles in a decades-long process that changed American literature. Featuring a lively, engaging style, this book represents a significant contribution to literary and translation studies, and, importantly, to the ever-evolving, ever-fraught American history of immigration. * Carol Apollonio, Research Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Duke University, USA * This is an engaging and authoritative history of Russian literature in translation in the United States, and how Russian literature came to occupy such a central place in the American canon of translated literature. Maguire anchors her story on the remarkable career of Nicholas Wreden, and as her account shows, given Wreden’s outsized role in popularizing Russian literature, it is puzzling that this is the first time his story has been told. * Ronald Meyer, Harriman Institute and Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University, USA * Maguire’s meticulously researched, informative and comprehensive study creates an impressive account of translation history of Russophone literature in America while also paying attention to translators’ literary taste, ideological beliefs, and networks. This book provides a broad understanding of Russophone literary history in its global context. Insightful and engaging, Invading the American Canon will be of significant interest to scholars and students specializing in translation studies, Russian Studies, comparative literature, and cultural history. * Alexandra Smith, Reader in Russian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK * This marvelous contribution to the emerging field of Translator Studies, written by a sensitive British scholar during her research stay at Princeton and dedicated to Princeton’s fireflies, vividly captures the paradox that translators’ lives and artistic strategies – when considered within broad historical and cultural contexts – are no less important or interesting than the works they translate and bring to their respective audiences. In a way, Muireann Maguire discovers and materializes a new world (in the New World) of “invisible” translators who sought to create (make, unmake, and remake) the flavor and meaning of Russian literature for American readers across different historical periods. Pushkin once called translators the 'post-horses of Enlightenment.' Invading the American Canon shows that they are more like modest but beautiful fireflies in the dark night who, in Frost’s words, 'achieve at times a very star-like start.' * Ilya Vinitsky, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University, USA *

Author Information

Muireann Maguire is Professor in Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Stalin's Ghosts: Gothic Themes in Early Soviet Language (2021), and co-editor of Translating Russian Literature in the Global Context (forthcoming, 2024) and Reading Backwards: An Advance Retrospective on Russian Literature (2021). She is also an active freelance translator from Russian to English.

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