Creative Liberties
Accompanying the hundreds of translations are, necessarily, hundreds of cover images. These represent the best – and the worst – of design over the decades, ranging from the beautiful to the bizarre to the ubiquitous face of Keira Knightley.
Many of these editions also include illustrations alongside the text, sometimes repurposing old, out-of-copyright ones such as those by Hugh Thompson and Edmund Brock. Often, the illustrators take a certain amount of creative liberty with their images, resulting in all kinds of wonderful, weird, and even downright ugly illustrations. This page aims to showcase the diversity of images used to embellish the translations, focusing on those viewed and recorded at Jane Austen’s House and Chawton House.
A Visit to the Village: Jane Austen’s House and Chawton House
I took the images below during a field trip to the village of Chawton, only a short drive from Southampton, where Jane Austen lived for 8 years. Both Chawton House, the house owned by her brother Edward, and Jane Austen’s House, where she lived for the last 8 years of her life, hold collections of translations. These are no ordinary collections, but the result of pilgrimages by translators and fans from across the globe, who have made their way to Chawton over the years to donate translations.
Both kindly granted me access to their collections to record and photograph the translations, a selection of which you can find below. The diversity of representations here, from Hugh Thompson’s classic peacock illustration to a few inexplicably spooky Victorian gothic covers, demonstrates the vast range of responses to and interpretations of Austen. Further detail on some of the more interesting images can be found in the Imagining Austen feature.
The Maps page has links to detailed maps of the translations I recorded in Chawton, including their pictures of their cover images, blurbs, and other details from inside the texts. It aims to provide a glimpse of the sheer variety of languages Austen has been translated into, and the global breadth of her influence.
GALLERY OF IMAGES
Chinese, 2010. Cover detail
Chinese, 2017. Cover using Hugh Thompson’s classic illustration
Spanish. A scandalous image of Brigitte Bardot. Courtesy of Goucher College
Norwegian, 2009. One of many post-2005 editions featuring Keira Knightley
Urdu, 2014. Published in Pakistan
Spanish edition. Image courtesy of Goucher College
French, 2022. A print-on-demand edition published by Amazon in the UK
Hebrew, 2008. 1 of 3 Hebrew editions donated to Jane Austen’s House
Japanese, 2020. A beautiful anniversary edition translated by Keiko Parker
Details from inside Keiko Parker’s 2020 Japanese translation
Further details. The preface contains descriptions of the characters
Polish, 2005. Another Keira Knightley image
Bulgarian, 2012
Italian edition. A stern looking Elizabeth Bennet holding a riding crop
Georgian, 2022
Azerbaijani, 2013. The third Keira Knightley I found at Chawton House
Serbian, 2011. The fourth Keira Knightley I found at Chawton House
Latvian, 2011. Suspiciously gothic – perhaps a symptom of conflation with the Brontës?
Romanian, 2008. The cover artwork, ‘Two Strings to her Bow’, is also found on other editions inc. a Spanish S&S
Serbo-Croat, 1976. The industrial looking metallic grey is a far cry from other feminised, romantic covers
Chinese. Another suspiciously gothic looking cover that indicates Bronte confusion
Chinese. A pretty illustration that bears similarities to Cassandra’s sketch of Jane, which is on the dust jacket
The sketch in question, as seen on the inside of the dust jacket
Romanian. A strange, anachronistic style, definitely marketed as romance for a female readership
Another cover from the same Romanian series, featuring the same over-processed and anachronistic art style
Ukrainian, 2023. Perhaps designed to appeal to younger female readers
With thanks to Jane Austen’s House and Chawton House for access to their collections, and thanks to Goucher College for the Spanish and Italian edition images.