Part 20 — Advertisements

Concerning the Proposed Centenary Edition of Tolstoy’s Works

In February 1922, Mr. Bernard Shaw addressed the following letter to the Press and it appeared in The Times, Daily Telegraph, Manchester Guardian and many other papers, receiving, then and subsequently, the endorsement of the numerous distinguished people, here and in America, whose signatures are appended.

10 Adelphi Terrace, W.C.2. 28 February 1922.

Sir,

We desire to call public attention, especially in circles interested in literature and in general cultural questions, to the lack of a complete edition of the works of Leo Tolstoy in the English language. Unfortunately the means adopted by Tolstoy to secure the widest possible circulation for his books had just the opposite effect. He invited all publishers in all countries to take the fullest advantage of the absence of international copyright between Russia and other countries by publishing his writings in such translations as they could procure without any reference to his moral or legal rights. In the case of any less famous author this step would have prevented his works being translated at all, as it is practically impossible to engage modern capital in publishing, or any other enterprise, without property rights. In Tolstoy’s case it led to the appearance of a great number of translations, including some very incompetent ones, of a few of his books which were considered specially interesting as stories, or were capable of being turned to account for propaganda. These few books have consequently become more or less well known; but the profits of their publication have been so divided that they have in no instance been able to carry a complete edition on their backs. Accordingly, no complete edition has yet appeared; and the one projected for the Tolstoy Centenary of 1928 by the Oxford University Press, translated by Aylmer Maude, whose competence and acceptance by Tolstoy himself are unquestionable, may prove commercially impossible unless the public, by spontaneously giving it the privileges of a copyright edition, both by subscribing for complete sets and specifying this edition in their purchases of separate volumes, makes up for the absence of legal rights and for the miscarriage of Tolstoy’s public-spirited intention in the matter.

The Oxford Press translation will be complete and unique, and certain to remain so, as it is not now possible for any new English writer to bring to a translation of Tolstoy’s works the personal knowledge of the author, and the peculiar experience of Russian life and of the Tolstoyan social experiments that followed the first publication of his writings, enjoyed by Mr. Aylmer Maude and his wife and collaborator, who is a native of Russia. We feel that its failure to appear would be a grave loss to our national literary equipment; and we earnestly hope that the opportunity of completing the nineteenth-century bookshelf both of our public and private libraries by a complete edition of his works in English will not be missed.

Yours truly, G. Bernard Shaw.

LIST OF SIGNATORIES TO SHAW’S LETTER.

Henry Ainley (Fedya of Reparation)

Meggie Albanesi (Alexandra of Reparation)

Rev. Cyril Alington, D.D., Head Master of Eton

William Archer

Lena Ashwell (Katusha of Resurrection)

J. F. Baddeley

John Bailey

Hon. Maurice Baring, O.B.E.

Dr. Ernest Barker, Principal, King’s College

Sir Alfred Bateman, K.C.M.G.

H. Wansey Bayly, M.R.C.S.

Ian Hay Beith, C.B.E.

Marie Belloc-Lowndes

Arnold Bennett

J. D. Beresford

Rt. Hon. Sir Geo. W. Buchanan, P.C., G.C.B., C.V.O., formerly Ambassador, Petrograd

Rt. Hon. Lord Carnock, P.C., G.C.B., K.C.V.O., formerly Ambassador, Petrograd

Sir Hall Caine, K.B.E.

Edward Carpenter

Clementine S. Churchill (Mrs. Winston Churchill)

A. Clutton Brock, B.A.

W. L. Courtney, L.L.D., Editor of Fortnightly Review

A. Emil Davies, L.C.C.

H. Walford Davies, F.R.C.O.

Brig.-Gen. Guy Payan Dawnay, C.M.G., M.V.O., D.S.O.

James Douglas, Editor of Sunday Express

J. D. Duff, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, LL.D.

Havelock Ellis, L.S.H.

Nevill Forbes, Ph.D., Reader in Russian, Oxford

J. L. Garvin, Editor of Observer

G. P. Gooch, D.Litt.

L. Haden Guest, M.R.C.S., M.P.

Cicely Hamilton

Austin Harrison

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins

John H. Hobson, M.A.

Silas K. Hocking

E. A. Brayley Hodgetts, Chairman of Russian Section, London Chamber of Commerce

Sonia E. Howe, Authoress of A Thousand Years of Russian History

W. W. Jacobs

Edgar Jepson, B.A.

Jerome K. Jerome

Henry Arthur Jones

Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, C.M.G., D.S.O., M.P.

Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., D.Sc.

Lady Constance Lytton

Sir Lynden Macassey

Justin Huntly MᶜCarthy

Miles Malleson

Hugh Macnaughten, Vice-Provost of Eton

W. Somerset Maugham, M.R.C.S.

Dorothy Massingham

H. W. Massingham

Cyril Maude

W. B. Maxwell

P. E. Meadon

Baron A. Meyendorff

Eustace Miles, M.A.

Gilbert Murray, D.Litt., Regius Professor, Oxford

Cathleen Nesbitt

Henry W. Nevinson

Sir Sidney Olivier

Sir Bernard Pares, K.C.B., Professor of Russian History, University of London

Rt. Hon. Sir Gilbert Parker, P.C., D.S.L.

Geo. Paston

Edw. R. Pease

John Pollock, M.A.

H. Hesketh Prichard, D.S.O.

Sir Henry Penson, K.B.E.

Arthur Rackham

Rt. Hon. Lady Rhondda

Rt. Hon. G. H. Roberts, J.P.

Sir E. Denison Ross, Ph.D.

Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.

St. John Ervine

May Sinclair

Rt. Hon. Lady Sybil Smith

A. B. Stodart, Hon. Sec. British Russia Club

Marie C. Stopes, D.Sc., Ph.D.

Lord Treowen, C.M.G.

Mrs. Alec-Tweedie, F.R.G.S.

Leslie Urquhart

Sir Paul Vinogradoff, Professor of Jurisprudence, Oxford

Graham Wallas

A. B. Walkley, F.R.S.L., Dramatic Critic of The Times

Hugh Walpole

Lt.-Col. John Ward, C.B., M.P.

Rt. Hon. Lord Weardale

H. G. Wells

Rebecca West

Rt. Hon. J. H. Whitley, P.C.

Norman Wilks

Harold Williams

C. Hagberg Wright, LL.D., Librarian, London Library

American

Jane Addams

James Lane Allen

Sherwood Anderson

James Branch Cabell

George W. Cable

Theodore Dreiser

Horace Howard Furness

Hamlin Garland

Ellen Glasgow

Robert Underwood Johnson

Robert Morse Lovett

Edwin Markham

H. L. Mencken

Harriet Monroe

Eugene O’Neill

William Lyon Phelps

Chas. Ed. Russell

Booth Tarkington

Lucy E. Textor

Hon. Henry Vandyck

Owen Wister

Beside those who have signed Shaw’s letter, Thomas Hardy wrote:⁠—

‘Although I have no first-hand knowledge of the details mentioned in Mr. Bernard Shaw’s letter on translations of Tolstoy, I agree with the opinion that a good rendering of his works into English—so far as that is possible—should be made practicable by the concentration of effort on one production; and I believe that Mr. Aylmer Maude’s competence for the task is special and trustworthy.’

Sir Edmund Gosse wrote to Mr. Aylmer Maude:⁠—

‘I wish to express my appreciation of your admirable labours and those of Mrs. Maude.’

Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer wrote:⁠—

‘I fully agree with contents of the letter.’

Professor Gilbert Murray wrote:⁠—

‘I am in the most cordial agreement with Shaw’s letter and will most gladly sign it. It is a great public service that you and the Oxford Press between you are undertaking. The wonder to me has always been how Tolstoy contrived to make such a tremendous and characteristic impression through such an opaque and distorting medium as the average Anglo-American translation.’

A score of letters containing Tolstoy’s very emphatic authorization and endorsement of the Maude versions of his work (such as he gave to no other translator) have been deposited with the Oxford University Press. These expressions of approval begin in 1897, when Mr. Maude translated What is Art, and were continued till 1910, the year of Tolstoy’s death. The following are a few extracts from these letters of Tolstoy’s:

5 Sept. 1897. ‘I have written to Tchertkoff asking him to leave it to you to do the translation. That will give me more satisfaction.’

18 Oct. 1897. ‘You have filled in correctly the word omitted on p. 31. In general I see that you are doing the translation with great care, for which I am very grateful. I am almost certain I shall be in accord with all your comments, but still send them to me. I, too, will examine them carefully.’

Nov. 1897. ‘I will begin to reply in sequence to your admirable remarks, which are of great use to the undertaking.... With all the rest of your remarks I quite agree, and prompted by them I have made alterations in my (Russian) text. Please make more such.’

Dec. 1897. ‘I yesterday received both your letters, dear friend, and hasten to answer them. I also received the translation. I have gone through it and have not found anything that held me up, except the words “admirable book of Verm” (p. 22). It should be “very good” and not “admirable”. The translation seems to me to be very good.’

Dec. 1898. ‘I have received your letter, dear friend Maude, and am very glad that you are again in England and wish to work at translating my writings. I do not desire a better translator, both on account of your knowledge of the two languages and of your strictness with yourself in everything.’

Jan. 1899. ‘I am very glad that your dear wife is doing the translation of Resurrection.’

May 1900. ‘Your translations are very good because you have an admirable mastery of both the languages, and besides that, to my great pleasure, you love the thoughts you transmit.’

Sept. 1900. ‘To lose such translators as you and your wife would be very, very unpleasant. Better translators, both in your knowledge of both languages and in your penetration into the very meaning of the matter translated, could not be invented.’

Feb. 1901. ‘I think that your and your wife’s splendid translation of what has previously been published and badly translated should find a publisher.’

Nov. 1901. (From a letter written by the Countess Olga Tolstoy.) ‘I am writing instead of Leo Nikolaevich, who sends many excuses for not having sooner replied to your two letters, and about the fine book, Sevastopol, you have sent. All this time Leo Nikolaevich has been very unwell.... He asks me to convey to you his great gratitude for the letters and for Sevastopol. He finds both the translation and the edition excellent, and that one could not desire anything better.’

23 Dec. 1901. ‘I think I have already written you how unusually pleased I was with the first volume of your edition. All is excellent—the edition, the notes, and chiefly the translation, and even more the conscientiousness with which all this has been done. I opened it accidentally at the Two Hussars and read on to the end just as if it were something new and had been written in English.’

6 Oct. 1903. A common friend in replying to an inquiry Mr. Maude made concerning his re-translation of a work, the previously published (Free Age Press) edition of which appeared faulty. ‘L. N. (Tolstoy) asks me to reply to your inquiry about the exactness of your translation of What is Religion? that your translation expresses his meaning more exactly, and he is quite satisfied.’

11 Dec. 1903. ‘Thank your kind friend Maude for sending me the volume of Essays and Letters (World’s Classics series). The edition is very good.’

1 Aug. 1909. ‘I am always glad to hear news of you and of your occupation, so closely connected with me, on excellent translations of my writings. Your loving Leo Tolstoy.’

18 Jan. 1910. ‘I am better now and add a line to say a few words, namely that the edition of your translations of my writings can only give me pleasure, because your translations are very good and I do not desire better ones.... My approval of your translations in my letters, you can, of course, publish.’

The Tolstoy Centenary occurs in 1928, and the form the projected complete Maude-Tolstoy Centenary Edition may take has not yet been decided, but the material for it is being prepared and a pocket edition of as much of it as is quite ready is appearing in the World’s Classics series, which already contains the following twelve volumes.

THE ‘MAUDE’ TOLSTOY The ‘World’s Classics’ Series

Pocket size, 6 by 4 inches. On thin opaque paper. Cloth, 2s. net; sultan-red leather, 3s. 6d. net.

The Cossacks and Tales of the Caucasus.

Including: The Raid, The Wood-Felling and Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment.

‘The best story that has been written in our language.’—Turgenev.

War and Peace (3 vols.).

‘We feel that we were ourselves there; that we knew those people; that they are a part of our very own past.’—Maurice Baring.

‘It is among the greatest works ever made by man, and the country is under a debt to Louise and Aylmer Maude for rendering it into English.’—New Labour Leader.

Anna Karénina (2 vols.).

‘Anna Karénina as an artistic production is perfection ... a thing to which European literature of our epoch offers no equal.’—Dostoevski.

Confession and What I Believe (1 vol.).

One of the sincerest and most remarkable confessions in all literature.

Twenty-Three Tales.

Containing: God Sees the Truth, A Prisoner in the Caucasus, What Men Live By, Two Old Men, Where God is Love is, Ivan the Fool, The Three Hermits, The Imp and the Crust, How Much Land does a Man Need? The Empty Drum, Too Dear, etc.

‘I regard them as the most perfect tales ever written.’—Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania.

The Kreutzer Sonata, Family Happiness, and Polikushka (1 vol.).

The first full translation, giving the passages suppressed by the censor. It is the most powerful and the most widely discussed of Tolstoy’s shorter novels.

Plays.

A complete edition (including the posthumous plays): The First Distiller, The Power of Darkness, The Fruits of Enlightenment, The Live Corpse, The Cause of it All, The Light Shines in Darkness.

‘Nothing in the whole range of drama fascinated me more than the old soldier in The Power of Darkness.’—Bernard Shaw.

Essays and Letters.

Including: Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves? Afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata, The First Step, Non-Acting, Religion and Morality, Shame!, Letters to Verigin, Non-Resistance, How to Read the Gospels, Letters on Henry George, Modern Science, Patriotism and Government, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, Reply to Synod’s Excommunication, What is Religion? An Appeal to the Clergy, and fifteen other articles.

‘Gives an excellent idea of the vast range of Tolstoy’s intellectual activities.’—Daily News.

Resurrection.

‘Undoubtedly the most important novel that has appeared in Europe for many years.’—Edward Garnett.

Ready Shortly.

What then must we do?

Tolstoy’s remarkable study of social conditions.

Other Volumes in Preparation

WHAT IS ART? (Now included in the volume, Tolstoy on Art.)

‘This book is a most effective booby trap. It is written with so utter a contempt for the objections which a routine critic is sure to allege against it, that many a dilettantist reviewer has already accepted it as a butt set up by Providence.... Whoever is really conversant with Art, recognizes in it the voice of the master.’—G. Bernard Shaw in The Daily Chronicle.

‘This calmly and cogently reasoned effort to put Art on a new basis is a literary event of the first importance.... I have never come across anything so good in its way as Mr. Maude’s version of Tolstoy. The translation reads like an original: you feel that Tolstoy has lost nothing in transit. And what a wonderful artist in prose this Tolstoy is! How vigorous and succinct! How persuasive!’—A. B. Walkley.

‘Tolstoy’s book is the most important essay in pure criticism of recent years, and it is destined to become a classic.’—Star.

‘The powerful personality of the author, the startling originality of his views, grips the reader, and carry him, though his deepest convictions be outraged, protesting through the book.’—Pall Mall Gazette.

‘Mr. Aylmer Maude’s translation is admirable—a better piece of work has rarely been performed; and Mrs. Maude’s English renderings of the French poems, whether as to meaning, spirit or rhythm, are so felicitous that they amount to a tour de force.’—M. H. Spielmann in Literature.

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London, E.C.4.

THE LIFE OF TOLSTOY.

First Fifty Years. By Aylmer Maude. Seventh Edition. 8 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

‘Will stand, I think, among the big biographies of our literature.’—G. Bernard Shaw.

‘The book is no sooner opened than it begins to exercise a sort of charm from which it is impossible to escape.’—Westminster Gazette.

(The Second Volume: Later Years is out of print, and will be revised.)

THE ‘MAUDE’ TOLSTOY.

Resurrection. With 14 Illustrations by Pasternak. 7s. 6d. net.

‘A special word of praise must be given to the illustrations. They illustrate the author with a sympathy and an insight which Tolstoy has never before enjoyed.’—Glasgow Herald.

Plays. (Complete Edition. Six Plays.) 7 Illustrations. 7s. 6d. net.

‘A vivid picture of life, full of light and colour and contrast; full, too, of wisdom and the wit that knows just where to hold its hand.’—The Times on ‘Fruits of Culture.’

Sevastopol and Other Stories (including Two Hussars, etc.). Photogravure Portrait and Map. 1s. 6d. net.

‘In these thrilling “Letters from the Front” Tolstoy realizes war ... as no other writer has ever done before or since.’—Contemporary Review.

Constable and Co., 10 Orange Street, W.C.2.

Leo Tolstoy. By Aylmer Maude. 8vo. 7 Illustrations. 6s. net.

A complete biography, with an account of Tolstoy’s home-leaving and death, and an explanation of what led to it.

‘Mr. Maude is our best English authority on Tolstoy, not alone because he knew Tolstoy intimately, but because, whilst admiring and loving him for his genius and his sincerity, he judges calmly, and is not carried away by hero-worship.’—Yorkshire Post.

Methuen and Co., 36 Essex Street, London, W.C.2.

The Life of Marie C. Stopes. By Aylmer Maude. With 14 Illustrations. 5s. net.

An authorized biography giving, for the first time, the story of her childhood, academic life, marriage, writings, opponents and inner life.

Williams and Norgate, 14 Henrietta Street, W.C.2.