Synopses & Reviews
Legendary publisher and writer John Calder said of Barbara Wright that she was “the most brilliant, conscientious and original translator of 20th century French literature.” Wright introduced to an English-speaking readership and audience some of the most innovative French literature of the last hundred years: a world without Alfred Jarry’s Ubu, Raymond Queneau’s Zazie, and Robert Pinget’s Monsieur Songe scarcely bears thinking about. This wonderful collection of texts about and by Barbara Wright—including work by David Bellos, Breon Mitchell, and Nick Wadley, as well as a previously unpublished screenplay written and translated by Wright in collaboration with Robert Pinget—begins the work of properly commemorating a figure toward whom all of English letters owes an unpayable debt.
Synopsis
This wonderful collection of texts by and about Barbara Wright—“the most brilliant, conscientious and original translator of 20th century French literature”—begins the work of properly commemorating a figure toward whom all of English letters owes an unpayable debt.
About the Author
Debra Kelly is Professor of French and Francophone Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster, Director of the Group for War and Culture Studies, and Editor of the Journal of War and Culture Studies. She has published widely in textual and visual studies and cultural memory, and on several of the authors translated by Barbara Wright.Madeleine Renouard is Emeritus Reader in French, Birkbeck. Her publications are on Teaching and Learning French as a Foreign Language, the Media, the Nouveau Roman (especially Robert Pinget), contemporary French poetry (especially Lorand Gaspar), visual arts (including women sculptors), semiotics (including Roland Barthes), and writers’ correspondence (especially George Orwell).