Constance Garnett, who was born Constance Black in Brighton in 1861, attended Cambridge, where she studied Latin and Greek; one of relatively few women in Cambridge at that time (it started admitting women in 1869, but didn’t award them degrees until 1948).
In 1891, Garnett met Russian exile Feliks Volkhovsky, who began teaching her Russian.
This would lead to Garnett translating Russian literature for publication; one of her first translated works was The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy. She would translate dozens of books by the best Russian writers over the course of her lengthy career and was praised by many of the great writers of her day, including DH Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway. Her greatest detractor was Russian author Vladmir Nabokov, who abhorred the idea of female translators on principle, and stated that he found her work excessively demure.
History has judged Garnett’s work kindly. Subsequent translators have stated that they based their work on hers, and many of her original translations are still in print. Today she is recognised as a pioneering translator who helped to bring much of the greatest work in the Russian language to a wide English-speaking audience.
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