Database

About the Data

This dataset is necessarily incomplete. In view of the vast number of translations of Austen’s works, it focuses on a selection of clearly defined parameters.

Firstly, this database currently covers only Austen’s 6 published novels – Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. Austen’s juvenilia, and unfinished novels such as Sanditon and The Watsons, were outside the scope of this project. They have their own histories of translation and publication that are not covered here.

Secondly, I chose to focus on discrete time periods, in order to work towards comprehensive sets of data for each. The first period I chose was the nineteenth century, starting from the first translation, which was during Austen’s lifetime, and ending with Félix Fénéon’s translation of Northanger Abbey, conducted (in prison!) in 1899. The data is – as far as I am currently aware – comprehensive for this period. It includes translations that have only recently been discovered, such as a Norwegian translation that was serialised in a newspaper, and a Portuguese translation that made its way to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before the century was out.

The second period of data is from the years 1994-1999, a time period that covers the impact of film and tv adaptations such as Andrew Davies’s Pride and Prejudice, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, and Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. You can find out more about this, and other impacts on the data, on the Investigating the Data page. As the number of translations published and re-issued over the span of these 6 years is vast, and the data incomplete and scattered, data for this period is still in the process of being collected, and I make no claims to have found them all – far from it. To find and record these translations, I have trawled through many national library catalogues, which you can find linked in the ‘Bibliography’ section. For countries with incomplete, missing, or non-existent online library catalogues, it has been much harder to collect information. Therefore, I welcome your contributions! If you have information about a translation I haven’t yet tracked down, please get in touch via the sidebar on the homepage.

Thirdly, the dataset contains detailed information – including information on paratextual presentation and cover images – on two collections of translations that I visited at Chawton House and Jane Austen’s House. These detailed records allow for more in-depth insight into how Austen is presented worldwide, accompanied by photographs of the cover images. They span no specific time period, relying instead on what visitors and translators themselves have offered as donations to these museums’ collections. You can see an exploration of the cover images I found in Chawton Village on the Illustrating Austen page, under the Explore tab.

Therefore, the constraints of the project mean there is little to no data for the years 1900-1993. In the short term, the dataset will be most helpful for exploring translations either pre-1900 or between 1994 and 1999. It is our eventual hope that this project will be able to expand and develop, to more thoroughly track translations of Austen across all time periods.

Using the Database

There is both a simple and an advanced search system. Using the simple search, you can search for keywords in the search bar such as ‘France’ or ‘Montolieu’. The advanced search helps you filter the results, for example by year of publication, language, novel, or whether they are new translations or reissues. Clicking on a result displays all available information about that translation, including references, and links to digitised versions where possible.

You can search directly by date or by date range. Each search category has 4 options for how you want to conduct the search: ‘contains’, ‘is’, ‘is present’, or ‘is not present’. Searching with ‘contains’ means it will find results that contain, but are not exclusively, what you have searched for. Using ‘is’ means it will only find results that exactly match what you have searched for. Using ‘is present’ will only return results that have data entered for that category, and ‘is not present’ will only return results without data for that category.

The below is an explanation of what each search category means, to enable you to search accurately and usefully for what you want.

• Source Name: which collection of translations it belongs to. The options are nineteenth-century translations, 1994-99 translations, Jane Austen’s House translations, and Chawton House translations
• Translated Title: the title in the translated language, as it appears on the cover
• Back Translation: the retranslated title into English, with its literal meaning
• Original Title: original novel title in English, e.g. Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park
• Language: language of translation
• First Publication Date: date of publication. Labelled as ‘first’ due to some works which were published serially and therefore have a beginning and end date of publication
• Last Publication Date: for serialised works, the last date of publication
• Author Given: author name as it is given on the text (or not)
• Translator Given: the translator’s name as it is given on the text (or not)
• Probable Translator: the most likely true translator of the text. Of course, in the vast majority of cases, the ‘probable translator’ is definitely accurate. However, especially for early translations where less is known, some of the translators are merely assumed or ‘likely’ without being certain
• Gender: the gender of the translator
• Periodical/Anthology: if applicable, the name of the periodical or anthology in which it appeared
• Publisher: name of the publishing house
• Publisher Name(s): the name of the publishing house owner, where known
• Country of Publication: country of text publication
• Publication Address: address of publication, with as much detail as could be gleaned from the cover page/publishing information
• Reissue: whether or not the text is a reissue as opposed to a new translation, coded Y or N (or blank for texts where this is uncertain)
• Digital Version: a link to a digital version of the text, where possible. This is largely for the nineteenth-century translations
• Notes: any further interesting or necessary notes on the translation or specific edition
• References: information about the source of the data, often with links to its position in a national library catalogue

Find Out More

To find out more about the data, visit the Explore section. There are a number of features about the translations and the database, including maps and graphs that track the influence of Jane Austen worldwide, as well as a gallery of cover images.

To see where the information about these translations comes from, see the Bibliography. All national library catalogues, articles, reference books, databases, chapters, and more are linked here, as well as the names of the experts who so kindly offered me suggestions and information for the database.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions. You can do so through the sidebar on the homepage.

Finally: have fun exploring!