I wanted to publish Pride and Prejudice, but that was not so easy. The British Marxist Arnold Kettle spoke very critically of her in his Introduction to the English Novel. He said Austen's heroes were too isolated from common people, since they lived behind the high walls of their estates... Several years later the publishing house Inostrannaya Literatura [Foreign Literature] published this novel in English with my preface where I quoted the Kettle's article (this was a must), though I did not agree with it. The thaw was only about to begin.
Later I learned that the famous physicist Emmanuel Marshak, the son of Samuel Marshak loved Jane Austen and had been translating this novel for twenty years. Several years after "Pride and Prejudice" had been published in our country, I received a letter from him where he asked me to write a preface and a commentary to his translation, which was later published in the "Literary Memorials" series by the Nauka [Science] publishing house. This was an outstanding series! I also wrote about Jane Austen later, though I never translated any of her works.
Copyright H. David Marshak, All Rights Reserved
