Barbara Wright ― Translation As Art

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about and by Barbara Wright—including work by David Bellos, Breon Mitchell, and Nick Wadley, as well as a previously unpublished screenplay written and translated by Wright in collaboration with Robert Pinget—begins the work of properly commemorating a figure toward whom all of English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.

Debra Kelly is Professor of French and Francophone Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster, London, Director of the Group for War and Culture Studies, and Editor of theJournal 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 at Birkbeck, University of London. Her publications are on teaching and learning French as a foreign language, the media, thenouveau roman (especially Robert Pinget), contemporary French poetry, the visual arts, semiotics, and writers' correspondence.