The Writers Who Translated Goethe into English Became Some of the Best Writers in English
Wherever Goethe was read, critiqued, and translated, one found the basis of oppositional cultures. This was especially true in Great Britain and New England. Bound by religious heritage and the experience of pilgrimage for intellectual and spiritual enrichment, the British mediators of German culture were, however, divided from their Boston cousins by differences in class and social influence. In New England, descendants of the original Puritans were socially dominant. In Britain, Dissenters from the Anglican majority, Scots Presbyterians, and other sectarians were politically and socially marginalized, as were women, Roman Catholics, and Jews. Nonetheless, members of all these peripheral groups formed the nucleus of the German-trained intelligentsia in Britain.
Moreover, the writings of these outsiders, chiefly translations and criticism, revealed connections between an English-speaking enthusiasm for Goethe, the American effort to declare cultural independence from Great Britain, and the migration of women writers from the margins of cultural life to its center. Margaret Fuller’s (1810–1850) efforts to critique and translate German literature and her emergence as one of the most important literary figures of the time are inseparable. And the arc of her career is similar to that of other Anglophone women writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), Sarah Austin (1793–1867), George Eliot (1819–1880), and Edith Wharton (1862–1937), all of whose mature writings owed something to earlier apprentice work reviewing and translating German literature of the period.
