There have already been countless victims of this recession and, of course, the human cost is the aspect that quite rightly ought to (and does) attract most attention.  But as the ripples spread wider, the squeeze is starting to be felt in cultural terms as well.

The latest potential victim is the Italian Dictionary of National Biography.  This ambitious project was started in 1960 and plans to include 105 volumes containing approximately 40,000 entries. The last volume, 72-73, brought the project up to the letter M. At long last, too, the DBI had really started to make progress, publishing two volumes a year instead of just one.

For anyone working in Italian studies – whether historical, literary or any other field – the DBI is a fantastic tool.  All the more so because it recently went online here.

So the recent news that the whole project may now be in jeopardy is extremely worrying.

If you happen to work in the field and feel strongly about this decision, PLEASE sign the petition to save the Dizionario which is currently being circulated around the various online groups!

You can send an email to this address, giving your full name, city and the university or field you work in.

appello@salviamoildizionariobiografico.it

Just a quick post on this because it’s been written about by much better-qualified people elsewhere: here’s the website, and also this piece by Elspeth King.

This afternoon about 2,500 women of all ages and a fair number of men, children and babies (plus a few dogs – including Tess who wasn’t at all happy about the drums at the end) processed from Bruntisfield to Calton Hill in Edinburgh.  Why?  To mark the centenary (or centenery as it was written on the banner!!) of the 1909 Scottish Women’s Suffrage Procession along Princes Street.  It wasn’t possible to follow the exact route now for reasons that are annoyingly clear to anyone living here, but for those who don’t – open quick parenthesis – Princes Street is currently impassable because of construction works for the tram system (should be “a good thing” eventually, but at what cost!).

The above image shows the October 1909 procession down Princes Street, Edinburgh: great banners, including “A Gude Cause maks a Strong Arm”! (courtesy of the Gude Cause website)

As well as the Edinburgh event, a similar re-enactment was held this morning in Dundee with a march through the city centre, past plaques celebrating the lives of “notable Dundee women”. (Another quick parenthesis: Dundee seems to have stolen a march on Edinburgh here by actually having a “Women’s Trail” comprising 25 plaques to, among others

missionary Mary Slessor, marmalade maker Janet Keiller and suffragette Ethel Moorhead. There is also a marker to an “Anonymous Maidservant”, a trade unionist who hid her identity because she would have been sacked if her boss had found out.

But back to Edinburgh – it was a beautiful day today and there was an amazing spirit of commitment, enthusiasm and friendliness.   I tagged onto the Women’s History Scotland group – with their wonderful banner showing The Biographical  Dictionary of ScottishWomen.

What with songs from Protest in Harmony group and other music, it was a happy and joyful occasion – a fitting memorial, but at the same time one that highlighted all that still needs to be done, both here and, above all, internationally.

Only a month ago, the UN voted to create a new, more powerful agency for women: in a move hailed as a breakthrough for women’s equality and rights, an assembly resolution called for the amalgamation of four existing U.N. offices dealing with women’s affairs into a single body.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will also be required to produce a comprehensive proposal, including the new entity’s mission statement, organizational arrangements, funding and executive board within a year. The number of women holding senior posts has also increased by 40 per cent under his tenure – although what the actual numbers are, I couldn’t find out! However, the UN does have a laudable goal of achieving a 50:50 gender balance at all levels in the UN System – more details here.

There are still countries where this poster applies: we must do everything possible through bodies like the UN to ensure that women’s rights are respected.

(London’s Suffrage Atelier, started by a group of artists dedicated to promoting votes for women, produced this 1912 poster – see this fascinating website for the International Museum for Women. )

‘International Writing with a Wayward Streak’ is the headline in Booktrade.info announcing Harvill Secker’s approaching centenary celebrations in 2010.

From January through to December 2010, the Random House imprint Harvill Secker will be celebrating a centenary of publishing. Harvill Secker has published some of the most iconic and inspiring literary works of the last 100 years, bringing international writing from exceptional writers to the attention of British book buyers.

Harvill Secker is part of the Random House Group – Dan Brown’s publishers, which said in the same breath as Harvill Secker is something of an oxymoron.  Harvill Secker has an impeccable list of authors, including J.M. Coetzee, Louis de Bernières, Günter Grass, Joseph O’Connor, Henning Mankell, Umberto Eco, José Saramago and Haruki Murakami.

Random merged The Harvill Press (founded 1946 under the famous Leopard logo as radically innovative publisher) – with the politically avantgarde Secker & Warburg (founded 1936) to make Harvill Secker in 2002.  In its later years, Harvill was revived under the direction of Christopher Maclehose and his comments at the time  of the merger make rather sad reading:

‘Harvill’s loss of independence may always be a matter of regret to me and to all those who supported its growth as an independent house and who worked for it, but the climate of the trade in Britain at any rate has dictated that that only within the shelter of a major publishing force can the authors of small and quality houses flourish. After perhaps too long at the helm of this great publishing house, I look forward to being able to concentrate on work with Harvill’s authors and translators, and to sharing the next years with the new members of the team, in particular with James Gurbutt, whose value to Harvill has already been demonstrated, and with the admirable Geoff Mulligan of Secker & Warburg’.

Harvill published some of the world’s most important and ground-breaking writers including George Orwell, Colette, Boris Pasternak, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Yukio Mishima, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vasily Grossman and Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa.

I started to think about the maths of the centenary announcement when I did a little more research into the history of The Harvill Press.  It’s a fascinating story – summed up here (with the occasional linguistic slip!) for Unesco by the Croatian publisher Hrvoje Bozicevic (my bold and italics):

Harvill press was established in on February 20th 1946, in London. The founders were Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers (hence Har-vill), both of them worked at the Foreign Office and their idea was (just “minutes” before “iron curtain” politically separated East from West and vice versa) to promote and exchange different cultures of “both sides”. They set up high standards, almost trying to avoid word “business”: their idea was more idealistic than close to reality, it was part of “cultural activity”, but also one has to remember that “ideals of united Europe” in the post-Second World War times were almost unthinkable, most of Westerners were sceptical, almost scared of communism. Exchanging the cultures? Cooperate with such bad guys as Russians? West was truly scared, and Britain, separated from continental Europe, with Americans as the most faithful allies even more so. Brave ladies of Harvill seemed unintimidated with Stalin moustaches.

From their small space in Lower Belgrave Street they established a long list with numerous classic 20th Century titles among them Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, just to mention few. In fact Russian literature was first on the list of their interest. It will not pass long time since Harvill had a reputation for publishing world-class translated and Collins acquired an English-language author of fiction and non-fiction and it. The money came inside bringing more authors. The Harvill list was precious and it would take too long space to mention all the names, most of them premier league of their country letters. In the future the translated fiction was still of premier interest (Manya Harari translated from Russian), but soon Harvill is publishing biographies, literary critique, poetry, philosophy, travel writing, illustrated books, very important part of the list.

Great success followed after publishing Boris Pasternak and Lampedusa Leopard. Than came Joy Adams novel and more Russians. Manya Harrari dies in 1969. Marjorie Villers will continue to be on the board with the help of Max Bonham Carter who was the most important figure for the Harvill’s promotion, until his death in 1994. Christopher MacLehose, until 1984 publishing director of Chatto&Windus, afterwards publisher and editor-in-chief of Collins become Harvill’s publisher.

So a centenary of Harvill this is not!  To find the real centenary you have to go back to Martin Secker, founder of the eponymous press in 1910, that was later taken over by Frederick Warburg and Roger Senhouse to become Secker & Warburg in 1936.

The DNB entry has this to say about Martin Secker: born Percy Martin Secker Klingender (1882–1978), he changed his name to Martin Secker by deed poll in 1910 and set up the publishing firm.  The first novel he published, The Passionate Elopement (1911), was also the first by its author, Compton Mackenzie.  He went on to publish, among others, D.H. Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Douglas, and by the

mid-1920s Secker was the pre-eminent British publisher of European work in translation of his time, with novels by Thomas Mann (Buddenbrooks), Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf), Arnold Zweig (Sergeant Grischa), Franz Kafka (The Castle), and Leon Feuchtwanger’s Jew Süss.

But enough about Harvill Secker and onto the second part of this post: Vagabond Voices.  The reason why I’m excited about Vagabond Voices is that it’s seems to “defy gravity” (in the publishing world at least) by being based on the Isle of Lewis (one of the Outer Hebridean islands of Scotland for those who might not know!).  Their website is here, with details of their first publications.

Like Harvill and Secker & Warburg in the early days, Vagabond Voices too has a radical mission:

Publisher of translated novels, political polemics and indeed unbridled rants:  It will be a fairly eclectic publisher, but its output will be literary and tend towards the promotion of socialist and non-violent ideals, although always in a spirit of openness and tolerance.

Wonderful! And what’s even better – with a good degree of professional bias from my side! – its stated core activity will be

the translation of European literary fiction into English, and so there is this transmigration of words from one language to another, the forced march of great multitudes of letters, the exodus of thoughts towards an inspired approximation of the original.

Roll on the years, and let’s hope that Vagabond Voices will also be celebrating a wonderful backlist of translated works that will enrich our all-too monoglot culture!

Must stop and do some work…

At a unique event, summarising a 10-year translating phenomenon, all the translators of the Harry Potter books met in Paris to discuss “what was lost in translation” and to celebrate their shared experience.

To mark international literacy day on 8th September, a Unesco-backed inititiative turned Paris’s Institut de France into a Hogwarth’s workshop as scores of wizards from the translating, publishing and academic world pondered the Potter phenomenon.

According to the clips on the BBC World Service’s report, the real difficulties lie in conveying the cultural concepts, giving the reader an experience like the experience of reading in English.

For example,  Israeli children (mostly) don’t celebrate Christmas or sing carols, so a compromise has to be found. In Japanese there are different words for twins, depending on the order they were born, so the Japanese translator had to ask JK Rowling who was older, Fred or George.  In Nepal, it was food that posed a major problem: pies just don’t exist; indeed the whole concept of the boarding school is totally alien, and the translator had to change the practice of calling the children by their surnames (Mr Potter, Miss Granger).  In other countries, it was the mythological creatures that posed problems (goblins and house elves), or the titles (anyone want to have a bash at The Deathly Hallows in Hebrew?)

The Georgian translator also pointed out the unique nature of the job: being the “Harry Potter” translator in a particular country turned the limelight onto a profession that usually works very much behind the scenes.

Still, a great occasion which celebrates the achievement of these professionals: I haven’t calculated the numbers of pages translated into each language, and the total number of languages (somewhere between 67 and 77 depending on which you include), but it probably amounts to a staggering 120,000 or more!

The Potter spell has cast a bit of sparkle over foreign languages and the translators themselves… let’s hope it lasts until   European Languages Day on 26 September, because languages are a bit of a Cinderella in this country and this is just the fairy godmother they need.

I missed his birthday on 7 September, but there’s a chance for more cake and 300 candles on 18 September (apparently after the change of calendar in 1752 he celebrated his birthday on 18 September).

There’s been so many wonderful Johnson features on radio and in the press, but I just wanted to comment on a couple.

First, the excellent DNB entry which is available online.  Written by Pat Rogers, ‘Johnson, Samuel (1709–1784)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2009.

Then a particularly vociferous and spirited Johnson on Johnson, or Boris on Samuel: London’s mayor on England’s literary colossus in Great Lives.

Another snippet from the BBC website highlights the enormity of Johnson’s task:

Johnson’s dictionary was intended to be the English equivalent of volumes produced decades earlier by Italian and French academies. A group of publishers contracted him to produce it in three years. When reminded that it had taken 40 French academics 40 years to produce theirs, Johnson apparently replied: “Forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”

Having been contracted to compile the Dictionary on 18 June 1746, it in fact it took him nine years to complete this mammoth work. The effort of doing so is revealed in his definition of “dull”:  “To make dictionaries is dull work.”  The two-volume Dictionary appeared on 15 April 1755.

He reiterated this in the Preface to the Dictionary where he wrote:

Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

His love of words was deeply felt and he writes that he “has endeavoured to proceed with a scholar’s reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian’s regard to the genius of our tongue”, especially with regard to orthography.  However, he realised that:

This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful And erroneous: I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to I forget that WORDS ARE THE DAUGHTERS OF EARTH, AND THAT THINGS ARE THE SONS OF HEAVEN. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

“Words are the daughters of earth… the signs of ideas”  – a wonderful turn of phrase.

But Johnson also realised that English is a living language, in constant evolution – a subject that is still hotly debated today.  He wrote:

it must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water. [...]
Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superiour to human resistance, as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide.

In an interesting comment, Johnson also adds that his Dictionary does not include many “terms of art and manufacture” because he lacked the time (and inclination) to visit mines, merchants stores, workshops, etc. to “gain the names of wares, tools and operations”.  In this he envies the lexicographers of Italy’s Accademia della Crusca who, he says, could draw on Buonaroti’s La Fiera (Michelangelo Buonaroti il Giovane was the famous Michelangelo’s nephew):

To furnish the academicians della Crusca with words of this kind, a series of comedies called la Fiera, or the Fair, was professedly written by Buonaroti; but I had no such assistant, and therefore was content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they not luckily been so supplied.

On a subject close to my heart, because he talks of translation and translators, Johnson becomes quite vitriolic – not, as I interpret it, against the act of translation per se, but the practice of contaminating language by introducing foreign phrases and words.

There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other, which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both, and they will always be mixed, where the chief part of education, and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign tongues. He that has long cultivated another language, will find its words and combinations croud upon his memory; and haste and negligence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotick expressions.

The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book was ever turned from one language into another, without imparting something of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and the fabrick of the tongue continue the same, but new phraseology changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the columns. If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our stile, which I, who can never wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavour, with all their influence, to stop the licence of translatours, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.

In 1773 Johnson and Boswell set off on a three-month journey to the then uncharted territory of the Scottish highlands and isles. The trip resulted in two books, Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

I have a book by Virginia Maclean, Much Entertainment. A Visual and Culinary Record of Johnson and Boswell’s Tour of Scotland in 1773, published in 1973 to mark the 200th anniversary of that journey.  The author retraces this journey and – as she says – sets out to disprove Johnson’s assertion that “women can spin very well, but they cannot make a good book of cookery”!!

I thought I’d just document his arrival in Edinburgh on 14 August 1773.  Boswell writes:

On Saturday the fourteenth of August, 1773, late in the evening, I received a note from him, that he was arrived at Boyd’s Inn, at the head of the Canongate.  I went to him directly.  He embraced me cordially and I exulted in the thought, that I now had him actually in Caledonia. … Dr Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High Street, to my house in James’s Court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. I heard a late baronet, of some distinction in the political world in the beginning of the present reign, observe, that ‘walking the streets of Edinburgh at night was pretty perilous, and a good deal odoriferous’. The peril is much abated, by the care which the magistrates have taken to enforce the city laws against throwing foul water from the windows; but, from the structure of the houses in the old town, which consist of many stories, in each of which a different family lives, and there being no covered sewers, the odour still continues. A zealous Scotsman would have wished Mr Johnson to be without one of his five senses upon this occasion. As we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear, ‘I smell you in the dark!’

The National Library of Scotland have an excellent map collection available online.  William Edgar’s map of Edinburgh Castle and City dates from 1765. You can zoom into the map and take a closer look at it here.

One homely detail is that Johnson loved cats and Hodge, his favourite pet, is immortalised outside the house at number 17 Gough Square, London.

And if you really want to celebrate Johnson’s birthday with tea and cakes, then pop inside Dr Johnson’s House where you’ll find an afternoon tea party on 13 September (you do need to book here!).

I know the Google Settlement is a hotly contentious issue which is vitally important to authors and probably of zero interest to most others.  But in fact it is going to introduce a whole new dimension for readers as well – especially those in the USA.

Today one of main UK radio news programme carried an item in which two novelists, Maureen Duffy and Nick Harkaway, discussed the pros and cons of staying in the Settlement (which will come before a court early next year) or opting out of the scheme which will allow Google to make all books published before 5 January 2009 available in electronic form from their website in the USA.

This is all rather irrelevant to me unfortunately as I assigned the copyright for most of my non-fiction translations to the publishers but, generally speaking, it has been broadly welcomed by publishers and authors’ societies.  In financial terms, the Settlement will provide rights holders (i.e. authors or anyone holding copyright to the printed text) with a “retrospective fee for Google having digitized the works, and potential royalties for specified future uses of those pre-January 2009 works in the USA”.

As Nick Harkaway – who has bravely opted out of the Settlement on principle – rightly points out, this is a “reshaping of the copyright landscape on which we all depend”.   The Google Settlement covers millions of books – many of which are European, in particular those that are out of copyright (the so-called “orphan copyright” works) – and it affects who will own the right to access them in the future. “We’re talking about the cultural history of the past hundred years or more and who will own it in the future”.

For curiosity sake, I looked at Google books and here is their triumphant statement: Google has reached a groundbreaking agreement with authors and publishers. (click on the link – it should take you to the page setting out the changes that will be introduced).

Further into their website, there is this statement by Sergey Brin:

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today, together with the authors, publishers, and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavor [...]  While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips.”

We hope and expect that this leap forward with our friends and partners in the publishing industry is just the first of many. We love books at Google, and our fondest dream is that Book Search will evolve into a service that ensures that books, along with their authors and publishers, will flourish for many years into the future.

On the face of it this is great, but like everything size can be decisive.  Google is already massively dominant in the internet market and this enormous digitization project effectively seals off any competition.  Europeana (the EU project) is a case in point (see my earlier post here) with frankly fairly limited print content and no real programme of including other works – specifically these “orphan” books.

I use the preview function all the time and I am constantly amazed at how the internet revolution has enabled us to seek out and find knowledge.  However, I think we just have to be careful what we wish for, and ensure that Google is really the right company to have virtual monopoly over the supply.

It’s not every day that you get a chance to claim a bit of Scottish literary history!  This Friday – 21 August – marks the 90th anniversary of the presentation of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize which was set up by my cousin, Janet Tait Black neé Coats.  The awards – one for biography and the other for fiction – have a glittering history (the recipients include no less than four Nobel prize-winners). As always, they will be judged by the Professor of English at Edinburgh University – on this occasion, Edinburgh’s first female Regius Professor Laura Marcus – and the presentation ceremony takes place at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

I’ve tried to work out my exact relationship to Janet but my genealogy skills are not up to the task: all I know is that her father, Thomas Coats (1809-1883), was my great-great-great uncle.  So if anyone can shed any light on what to call that sort of cousin-ship (exactly how many times removed!?), I’d be delighted to hear from them!

James Coats (d. 1833) and Catherine Mitchell had ten sons, including James and Peter Coats, who founded J&P Coats in Paisley in 1830.  Sir Peter Coats was my great-great-great grandfather – his line marches down through the generations, first his son George Coats, then Ernest Coats, and finally Ian Coats, my mother’s father.

Thomas Coats (Janet’s father) was the fourth of the ten sons.  He trained as a textile engineer and was also an active Baptist. He joined the family firm in 1832 or after his father’s death, and together with his brother Peter, the managing partner, they oversaw its massive expansion over the next fifty years.  On 13 October 1840 he married Margaret Glen and, like most Victorian families, they had a vast family, six sons and five daughters -  the last surviving child was Margaret, who died unmarried in 1946.  Like his other brothers, Thomas Coats was a generous philanthropist and his most substantial gift to the community of Paisley was the Thomas Coats Memorial Church, which was funded by his family in 1894.

Janet Coats was born on 15 February 1844, probably at Maxwellton in Renfrewshire, since Ferguslie House,  also in Renfrewshire, was not purchased by her father until 1872.

Janet married James Tait Black in 1884.  This was very late for the time as she was already 40; indeed, she and James had no children.   However, their marriage doesn’t seem to have lacked romance and there is undoubtedly a story waiting to be told behind their meeting and subsequent engagement: Janet’s younger brother, the dashing George Coats (1849-1918), who became the first Baron Glentanar, had married Margaret Lothian Black on 23 December 1880.  Margaret was James Tait Black’s daughter from his first marriage to the daughter of Mr Maurice Lothian – not sure of her name, but her father was “widely known and respected in Edinburgh’s legal and ecclesiastical circles”. However, the first wife had died leaving James a wealthy and well-connected widower.  Janet Coats was a spinster and she must have been delighted to find herself being courted by this civilised and educated 58-year-old who “was an accomplished musician, had acquired considerable proficiency as a painter in water-colours and as an amateur in all branches of photography, and was a zealous and judicious book-collector”. It must have seemed a perfect match – with more genealogical puzzles (viz Janet’s step-daughter was also her sister-in-law, making the Glentanar children her grandchildren and nephews and nieces!)

James Tait Black remained active in his father Adam’s publishing firm, A&C Black, until as late as 1899 and died in November 1911.  There is a lengthy obituary in The Times which describes his involvement in the publishing world of the time:

As a publisher Mr. Black is worthy of mention as having been an early and successful leader in a movement which has since reached great dimensions, the sixpenny reprints of the Waverley Novels, which had a great success, having been largely due to his sagacity and enterprise. His most noteworthy achievement was the production of the ninth edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” which was begun about 1870 and reached its completion in 1888, In the literary as well as in the commercial aspects of this work he took a warm interest throughout, alike during the editorship of Professor Baynes and during that of Professor Robertson Smith. That latter in 188o put on record a cordial tribute to the ability and liberality which the publishers had shown, not only taking “the warmest interest in the literary work, but also giving the editors the manifold assistance which can be derived from a practical knowledge of affairs.”

As mentioned above, highlights of A&C Black’s publishing history include the purchase of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1827, the copyright of Scott’s Waverley novels in 1851, and in 1896 the already eminent biographical collection Who’s Who (which Adam Black, James’ son by his first marriage, is said to have won on a coin toss!!).

While Janet’s husband was alive, they may have commuted between Edinburgh, London (where a office was opened in 1889) and Ayrshire, but James Tait Black is also said to have owned Underscar Manor, outside Keswick, in Cumbria, where they may have spent holidays.  The following extract from the Listed Building register for Underscar (although the manor was delisted in 2000 and is now a hotel) highlights the delights of the scenery and the spectacular site:

The land on which the building stands, together with other parcels of land , was purchased by William Oxley in1856 for £1340. The house was completed in 1863. The house was sited within extensive grounds, set with specimen trees, and with a walled garden to the east, and enjoys unrivalled views of Derwentwater. William Oxley died in 1861.
An extensive and prominent villa in the Italianate style, spectacularly sited and recently carefully refurbished, the style and siting of which aptly characterises the flavour of the mid-late C19 developments around the Cumbrian Lakes by industrialists and entrepreneurs.

After James’s death, Janet clearly wanted to commemorate his lifetime love of books, as a collector, reader and publisher, and she left a bequest in her will of  £11,000 “to be used for two prizes of whatever income the fund should produce after paying expenses, including a fee of  £50 to the judge”. Writing in 1935, Bessie Graham could still claim that these prizes were “the most valuable in Great Britain”.

I’ll be going to the presentation on Friday evening and I hope that the standard continues to live up to my great-great-great-cousin’s hopes, and that it proves a truly fitting memorial for her husband, a great Victorian bibliophile.

Thanks to Rita Charbonnier for drawing my attention to this great discussion among fans of Italian historical novels and four authors – at the moment of writing this, there have been a total of 428 comments!

It was a real eye-opener to discover the buzz of excitement created by Massimo Maugeri on his blog Letterattitudine when a few days ago he launched an open discussion focused on historical novels led by Andrea Ballarini, Marco Salvador, Cinzia Tani and Rita herself.   Filippo Tuena, Andrea Frediani and Giulio Castelli later also joined in.

At this stage, I should explain that I’m the profiles editor for Solander (the magazine published by the Historical Novel Society) and I also lived in Italy for many years and work as a translator.  So that explains the twin interest in historical fiction and all things Italian! By strange coincidence – there’s obviously something in the air! – I wrote an article for the latest issue (May 2009) of Solander on Italian historical novels (you can read the  article here).   For the record though, the novels I chose were by Manzoni, Tomasi, Eco, Maraini and Monaldi & Sorti.

But back to Letterattitudine.  Here’s a quick resume of the authors’ latest works based on the reviews included on the blog – and apologies for any inaccuracies as I haven’t yet read any of the books!

Andrea Ballarini, Il Trionfo dell’Asino (Del Vecchio) – Set in the late 17th century, Giacomo Crivelli – the narrator – belongs to a well-to-do family, but instead of following in his father’s footsteps as the “Provveditore Generale” at the ducal court, he is willing to give up everything for the sake of his one overriding passion in life: the theatre.  Having joined a group of travelling players led by Aristotele  Cereri, Giacomo becomes involved in the search for the text of an ancient comedy, a quest that leads them to Paris and the court of the Sun King, and then back to Italy – clearly, with plenty of entertainment, frivolity and excitement on the way.

Rita Charbonnier, La Strana Giornata di Alexandre Dumas (Edizioni Piemme) – This is Rita’s second historical novel (see her own website for further details about Mozart’s Sister: A Novel 2008) and again she focuses on a story about women whose existence has been overlooked and marginalised by history: in this case, Maria Stella Chiappini, a woman who told her extraordinary tale to the famous nineteenth-century French author, Alexandre Dumas – a scandalous story that could have shaken to its very roots the whole of the kingdom of France.

Marco Salvador, La Palude degli Eroi (Edizioni Piemme) – Marco Salvador has written three other historical novels on the Longobards (Lombards).  The protagonist of his latest is the extraordinary Guido da Romano, the adopted son of Alberico and natural son of the great condottiere Ezzelino.   The reviewer describes the book as a “genuine work of art” that enables readers to immerse themselves in the period.

Cinzia Tani, Lo Stupore del Mondo (Mondadori) – Cinzia Tani is an award-winning writer, journalist, as well as a TV and radio presenter.  Her previous novel Sole e Ombra won the Premio Selezione Campiello 2008.  Her latest book is set in the 13th century, in Sicily under the rule of the Hohenstaufen emperor, Frederick II, and the conflicts between the imperial forces, the papacy and the Lombard League.  The protagonists are Piero, Matteo, Flora and Rashid are brought together in a story filled with “heat and colour … emotion, adventure and mystery, where passions and betrayals alternate over the course of half a century”.

I couldn’t possibly translate all the comments that have been made, but Massimo launched a few key questions to get the discussion going:

1.  What are the key characteristics of a historical novel?

2.  What should be the aims of a historical novel?

3.  On the contrary, what should it avoid doing?

4.  How do you view the market for historical novels in Italy today?

5.  And in the rest of the world?

6.  Survey question – what do you think is the greatest historical novel “of all time” (the most representative of its kind)?

In particular, I was keen to guage the general trend of answers to questions 4 and 6.

On question 4, Cinzia Tani seemed to represent a general view when she writes:  “I think that the historical novel in Italy today is in good shape, but I believe this is just the beginning. Perhaps this is a way to revive a tradition of writing/reading novels that is completely lacking here in Italy.”  Marco Salvador also echoed an opinion that was frequently expressed: “apart from the writers participating here and a few others, there is an awful lot of ‘trash’ written – not because the authors aren’t good writers but because they mainly write fantasy.”

Answers to the question of the  “best historical novel” included – among others (and I’ve only mentioned the Italian authors): Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi, Sebastiano Vassalli La Chimera, Tomasi di Lampedusa Il Gattopardo, Luther Blissett Q, Wu Ming Manituana, Italo Calvino Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, Valentino Rocchi 1504-Notte all’Hostaria La Guercia, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Sciascia, Bufalino and Camilleri (not the Montalbano novels), Pirandello’s I Vecchi e i Giovani.

Thanks also, Marco, for the quote by Nathan Uglow which I didn’t know:

The historical novel is a literary genre characterized by the attempt to fuse strong dramatic plot lines and credible human psychology, within a setting constituted from specific historical detail (typically based upon diligent research into actual events, locations, and characters, as well as cultural customs, costume, and speech). [Nathan Uglow, Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds]

This highlights a recent trend here in UK for historical novels that are the outcome of years of serious research.  The question was the subject of a recent discussion by Hilary Mantel, Sarah Dunant and others at Birkbeck College in London.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t go but – thanks to Talking Books – you can listen to the fascinating debate here.

At whisky distilleries the difference in quantity – but undoubtedly, also in quality – between a newly casked whisky and the resulting golden, mature liquid is known as the “angel’s share” (it is calculated as approximately 2% of the volume per year, but without this evaporation whisky wouldn’t be the magical brew that it is).
There’s a similar analogy with translation… you may lose something of the work in its original, but a good translation often adds its own magic, an added layer of creativity and interpretation.
Okay, so may be the analogy is a bit far-fetched, but you do hear stories of books that win prizes in translation when the originals had virtually passed unnoticed.
So, this afternoon I was delighted to hear (part) of a radio play by Christopher William Hill starring one of my all-time heroes, the actor Bill Nighy, except …. and this is the rub … I only heard part of it while driving back from a routine “practice driving” session (my daughter is taking her driving test in 3 weeks so the pressure is on!).
What I heard was tantalisingly similar to the scenario I outlined above:

When mediocre novelist Patrick Bradyn discovers that his French translator has reworked his latest spy novel as autobiography, he finds himself with a profound moral conundrum.

The novel wins a top French literary prize, the Prix de Proust (if I heard it right!), and its author – who was on the verge of retiring following catastrophic reviews and worse sales – suddenly finds himself the subject of frenzied literary attention from sexy French publishers keen to solicit more than just a new book contract.

I’d just got to the bit where  Hannah (Penelope Wilton), his translator, admits she “rewrote” the French translation – changing it from third to first-person and clearly improving it beyond recognition!

It was a shame that the “French” translator sounded so impeccably English – no translator would dream of translating a novel into anything but their mother tongue. Even bilingual speakers often find that they only translate in one direction – whereas they are often brilliant two-way interpreters.

However, leaving that aside, I long to find out how it ends… does the translator win her man (yes, there’s a love angle – again, somewhat unprofessional!), or did the sexy French publisher get her way after all.  So, I’m off to listen again…

I heard the Booker Longlist being read out last night by Jim Naughtie and Locasta Miller on Front Row.  Although it seems an impossible task, whittling 132 novels down to the “baker’s dozen” longlist of just 13, here are the results:

The 2009 longlist is:

Author                          Title  and Publisher

Byatt, AS                      The Children’s Book Random House – Chatto and Windus

Coetzee, J M               Summertime Random House – Harvill Secker

Foulds, Adam              The Quickening Maze Random House – Jonathan Cape

Hall, Sarah                   How to paint a dead man Faber and Faber

Harvey, Samantha      The Wilderness Random House - Jonathan Cape

Lever, James                Me Cheeta HarperCollins – Fourth Estate

Mantel, Hilary              Wolf Hall HarperCollins – Fourth Estate

Mawer, Simon             The Glass Room Little, Brown

O’Loughlin, Ed             Not Untrue & Not Unkind Penguin – Ireland

Scudamore, James      Heliopolis Random House – Harvill Secker

Toibin, Colm                Brooklyn Penguin – Viking

Trevor, William             Love and Summer Penguin – Viking

Waters, Sarah              The Little Stranger Little, Brown – Virago

With his usual air of confidence, James Naughtie, who chairs the judging panel, said:

‘The five Man Booker judges have settled on thirteen novels as the longlist for this year’s prize.  We believe it to be one of the strongest lists in recent memory, with two former winners, four past-shortlisted writers, three first-time novelists and a span of styles and themes that make this an outstandingly rich fictional mix.’

His fellow judges are Lucasta Miller, biographer and critic; Michael Prodger, Literary Editor of The Sunday Telegraph; Professor John Mullan, academic, journalist and broadcaster and Sue Perkins, comedian, journalist and broadcaster.

What was really interesting was that both Mark Lawson and Jim Naughtie remarked on the dominant presence of “historical themes”:   AS Byatt, Adam Foulds, Hilary Mantel, Simon Mawer, Colm Toibin, and Sarah Waters all have written historical novels of one form or another.  As Mark Lawson says, “it seems a prize dominated by historical novels.  Ten of the thirteen are set entirely or partially in the past”.

It was particularly revealing – and exciting – that Lucasta Miller confirmed this trend by saying that almost half of all those submitted – all 132 – had some historical element to them, so “it’s definitely something that’s going on in fiction generally at the moment”.

I’m delighted that Solander - the magazine published by the Historical Novel Society – will be publishing an interview with Hilary Mantel this November, and there are plans for profiles of Sarah Waters and AS Byatt next May.

However, historical themes apart, it’s a fantastic spread of ages and styles, new and experienced writers…  as Jim Naughtie correctly states:

There isn’t a bias towards historical fiction, there’s a bias towards good writing.

The short list will be announced in October and – for what it’s worth – my money’s on Hilary Mantel.

Postscript on Thursday 30th July:

William Hill have now published their opening Odds on the Booker longlist:  it’s neck-to-neck between Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel at respectively 4/1 and 5/1!  I’d love to know who bets on the Booker prize?  Critics, general readers, the authors, the publishers!?  Are you tempted?