acquainted with both languages'; clearly an
overstatement, if only because nobody in
the world has ever been perfectly acquain
ted with the immense resources of even
one language, let alone two. At a time
when the teaching of foreign languages
was in its infancy and when it was belie
ved that they could be acquired by rubbing
shoulders with them, as it were, Lorain
employed all sorts of people to help him,
some good writers, some even already
experienced in translation, but also the old
man whose English had puzzled Dickens,
and a dazzlingly beautiful girl of 19.
In spite of such drawbacks, those people
did their best, which was not very good
but to a certain extent passed muster, since
in a hundred years over a million volumes
were sold, most of the novels having been
reprinted many times. Louis Hachette and
his successors must have made a pretty
profit, considering that the initial outlay in
royalties had been so trifling.
Two fresh attempts were made to provide
France with a satisfactory edition of Dic
kens's works in translation. One proved
abortive, shortly before World War Two,
and died after three volumes had appeared.
After the War, The Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade launched its Oeuvres de Dickens
the first six volumes were edited by Pierre
Leyris, the last three by myself; volume
IX completed the series in 1991.
Insofar as criticism exerts an influence
over people's tastes in reading and over
the buying of books, a tribute must be paid
to the pioneer work of Dickens's early
French admirers, like Hippolyte Taine, for
instance, whose long analytical essay
appeared for the first time in 1858, and,
though it displeased John Forster because
Taine, not unlike G.H. Lewes, saw somet
hing hallucinatory in Dickens's imagina
tive work, showed a good deal of sensitivi
ty and shrewdness. Articles and books on
Dickens kept being written and published
in a thin but steady flow throughout the
long transitional period of the late Victori
an, Edwardian and Georgian ages. New,
or at least revised and - alas, too often! -
abridged editions also kept appearing.
Stage versions of some novels likewise
achieved success.
Four names deserve mention for the period
up to World War Two; two of the names
are academic, the other two more literary -
not that, I hope, there is incompatibility
between academicism and literariness.
When I became a student at the Sorbonne
in October 1939 - a period of which it
might be said that, while it was the best of
times, it was also the worst of times - two
of my five professors in the English de
partment had written books on Dickens, a
proportion of 40% unequalled, I suppose,
in any British University. One was Floris
Delattre, whose book entitled Dickens et la
France is of obvious relevance to my
theme this morning; it was really a series
of lectures and now inevitably seems lar
gely outdated since it belongs to the late
20s, and much has happened since then;
the other was the greatest French angliciste
of this century and perhaps of all times,
Louis Cazamian, a man of powerful and
penetrating intelligence; he had written a
thesis on the English social novel in which
he studied Dickens together with Disraeli,
Mrs Gaskell and Charles Kingsley. This
thesis had been completed in 1903, it
remained little known in England, until
someone realized that it was quite useful
still and had not taken too many wrinkles;
but that was in the 1970s, and the English
translation of Cazamian's The social novel
of England was published in 1973, seventy
years after its appearance in France, and
several years after the author's death. The
other two supporters of Dickens's fame in
my country were more glamorous writers:
André Maurois devoted several essays and
one complete volume to Dickens in the
1930s, and the philosopher and man of
letters who signed his books 'Alain'
(though his full name was Alain Chartier)
brought out his short volume En lisant
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