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On those occasions when a foreign author's work first appears, an editorial headnote explains its importance, but subsequent stories need no such justification. [...]even as the editors worked to increase circulation, they created a sense of a community of readers who were already "in the know" when the magazine included a foreign author for a second time. According to C19: The Nineteenth Century Index, between 1895 and 1912 Hallard's by-line appears in fifty unique periodical items, almost all of which are translator credits. [...]Hallard only appears in contemporary scholarship as a footnote; searches for Hallard in Proquest's Literature Online and MLA International Bibliography databases produce only two hits. According to Jewish Virtual Library, Paul Heyse was "considered an honored and prominent writer of short stories" ("Paul Heyse").
Frank Newnes, son of George Newnes, once asked newly minted editor Reginald Pound if he knew that "in the beginning [the Strand Magazine's] short stories came from foreign sources."1 For a brief period before Sherlock Holmes and the serialized short story, the pages of the Strand Magazine (1891–1950) contained short stories translated from French, Russian, and Hungarian authors across continental Europe.2 In his 1948 reminiscence of editorial life, A Maypole in the Strand, Pound recounts how the early issues of the Strand came to contain so much material from "foreign authors":
[Herbert Greenhough Smith] worked in the office of a none too bright monthly called Temple Bar, where he hit on the idea of a magazine consisting entirely of short stories translated from foreign authors. His proprietor turned it down, so he sent it to George Newnes who signed him on as assistant to him on The Strand Magazine to be. This was in the summer of 1890, and the magazine … had no stories, no articles, no illustrations, nothing but a "dummy," that is to say, a magazine of blank pages with the general layout scribbled in.3
The irony of a publishing magnate like George Newnes having "nothing but a 'dummy'" only months prior to launch is palpable. No wonder that Greenhough Smith's idea not only caught Newnes's attention but, in fact, became a part of the magazine's initial self-proclaimed model.
In his introduction to the first issue (January 1891), Newnes declares that the magazine "will contain stories and articles by the best British writers, and special translations from the first foreign authors."4 Within this issue, six of the fourteen individual items (43 percent) were short stories translated from foreign authors, while only one of the fourteen was a short story originally written in English. Grant Allen's "A Deadly Dilemma" appeared very early in the issue, preceded by a Christmas-themed frontispiece, Newnes's introductory editorial, and an essay entitled "The Story of the Strand." The first work in translation followed Allen's story and another essay, placing it roughly a third of the way through the issue. Although Greenhough Smith clearly had not succeeded in convincing Newnes to dedicate the whole periodical to translated short stories, he had greatly influenced the content of the magazine's fiction. As the Strand's longstanding literary editor, Greenhough Smith would shift and revamp the magazine's patterns for publishing fiction during its early decades, but his focus on translated stories sets the initial issues of the periodical apart from the rest of its long run.
The Strand's serial short stories and detective fiction have attracted extensive scholarly attention, but these elements are preceded by the "foreign authors" experiment. Mike Ashley asserts, "Greenhough Smith was an admirer of … foreign masters, and as far as he was concerned one of the main purposes of the Strand in its early years was to introduce short stories of that type to a British audience."5 Greenhough Smith's desire to introduce such authors is not only clear from the inclusion of their works but also through a feature seldom found elsewhere in the Strand: the editorial headnote.6 Of the 124 unique items in volume one (January–June 1891), only sixteen include the hard-to-miss editorial headnote; all sixteen are works of translated fiction (figure 1). Neither the Anglophone works of fiction nor the various non-fiction articles receive this treatment. What then does the editorial writer, presumably Greenhough Smith, have to say to the British audience regarding the works of foreign masters? And how does the early focus on works in translation fit into our understanding of the Strand and its position in the fin de siècle marketplace? After a brief data analysis of the fictional make-up of the magazine's first volume, this article examines the Strand's editorial treatment of stories from foreign authors and the contemporary critical response to that choice. My data extends directly from the work of Winnie Chan, who thoroughly documented the short story content of the Strand's first twenty volumes in her monograph The Economy of the Short Story in British Periodicals of the 1890s.
Brief Data Analysis
The Strand has received much deserved credit for its significant role in establishing the popularity of short fiction in England and, by expanding the marketplace demands for shorter reading content, the modern short story itself.7 Scholars have long noted that the short story form was underdeveloped in Great Britain in the long nineteenth century. In their introduction
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to The Age of the Storytellers, David Pringle and Mike Ashley argue, "[British] writers who dabbled with the short story did so in imitation of the form elsewhere."8 While the genre formed a much stronger part of the literary marketplaces in continental Europe and America, those British novelists who "dabbled with the short story" had found neither the market nor the literary success enjoyed by their American and European counterparts.
Although Newnes modelled his new publication after two bastions of Anglophone American periodical fiction, Scribner's and Harper's, he allowed Greenhough Smith to fill the magazine's pages with the alreadysuccessful foreign language works that the literary editor so admired. Greenhough Smith placed translated fiction as the flagship item in 27 percent of the issues during the first six years of the Strand's run. Of the sixty-six issues published between January 1891 and June 1896 (volumes one through eleven), eighteen issues begin with a translated short story; throughout the rest of the decade, no other issues lead with a work in translation. In contrast to Greenhough Smith's literary ideals, Newnes may have been influenced by the cheapness of such content (most translations were done by women, whose labor cost less than men's) and the loose copyright laws governing works from outside the empire. Still, Newnes's business acumen would only lead him to include cheap content in his new monthly if he thought the marketplace would pay to read it. The content of the first six issues suggests that he believed readers would support a magazine perhaps not stuffed with such fiction, but certainly one heavily weighted with it.
The first collected volume of the Strand (January–June 1891) contains 33 percent fiction: 19 percent translated texts and 14 percent stories originally written in English. The first issue (January 1891) includes a short story by Alexander Pushkin and the second (February 1891) one by Honoré de Balzac. Guy de Maupassant appears in the fourth issue (April 1891) and Victor Hugo in the fifth (May 1891). But while the second volume (July–December 1891) also contains 33 percent fiction, the balance shifts drastically with translated stories making up only 10 percent of the content and stories originally in English making up 23 percent. Other than a small resurgence in volume eight (July–December 1894), translated short stories gradually fade from the pages of the Strand between 1892 and 1900 (figure 2). Short stories in English held steady, however, accounting for 20–25 percent of the total contents from volume two (July–December 1891) to volume eight (July–December 1894). In 1895, when Greenhough Smith began to allow serialized novels, fiction items originally written in English surged to 38 percent of the total content for volume ten.9 At the same moment, works in translation contributed only 5 percent (five of the fortytwo short stories) of the volume's content. Greenhough Smith continued to
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publish five to seven translated short stories per volume until 1898. Only one translated short story appeared in 1899, and it was in the January number. Greenhough Smith's "rather revolutionary policy," as Pringle and Ashley refer to it, burst upon the scene in the earliest issues, then lingered through much of the first decade of the Strand's run, but came to an end before the century did.10
Headnote Trends in Volume One
The editorial headnotes in the first volume of the Strand offer commentary that ranges from introducing new authors to establishing the freshness and greatness of short stories written by familiar authors. Greenhough Smith's use of headnotes to distinguish short stories in translation implies that he sought to educate his readers about the foreign works presented to them. If the move were purely driven by a potential niche in the marketplace for works in translation, then the "translated from" by-line attribution would be sufficient. And if education were the sole aim, then it would follow that all short stories should receive a brief literary commentary. Instead, as pointed out earlier, Anglophone short stories lack editorial commentary and only some works in translation include it. Furthermore, the editorial headnotes read more as justifications for why the reader should care about the author than as literary lectures meant to edify the reader.
The only Anglophone short story in the January 1891 number is Grant Allen's "A Deadly Dilemma." At the time of printing in late 1890, Allen had a significant reputation as a writer of both popular science and fiction; his short story appears only with the standard title and by-line that mark most articles in the Strand. While Greenhough Smith did not feel the need to identify Allen as one of the "best British writers," he did, it would seem, need to justify French writer Alphonse Daudet as one of the "first foreign authors."11 The headnote that accompanies Daudet's story "Scenes from the Siege of Paris" reminds the reader that "most of [Daudet's] novels are well known in England" and that he is the "most brilliant of French novelists alive."12 Because the Strand's self-proclaimed focus is on the short story, the editor suggests that Daudet's "world-wide fame" began when he "turned to writing stories."13 The editorial note concludes that the "characteristic little stories here translated will probably be new to English readers."14 In reminding the Strand's audience that Daudet is well known in England, Greenhough Smith establishes that the British reader has already, generally speaking, accepted the foreign author as a writer worthy of attention. In highlighting that they are the first to read this specific story, he simultaneously appeals to readers' desire for new content and confers status on the Strand as a source of material not available elsewhere. Yet the diminutive "little stories" suggests the audience's power, as if by allowing the foreign author a bit of their time, they offer him the opportunity to gain fame in the only place that counts: England.
While not all of the headnotes contain this subtle nationalism, they do rely on several consistent motifs: fame in the author's country of origin, quality of writing, and the author's reputation as a person of letters. In the Strand's first number, the reader encounters the work of Alexander Pushkin, the "first of the great Russian writers," and Paul Heyse, "the greatest German novelist now living" whose short stories are "his best achievements."15 The reader also learns that "nature had meant [Leo Lespes] for a man of letters": after a short career as a soldier, he became an author and "one of the chief founders of the Petit Journal."16 Again, the editor invites the English reader to feel a sense of power, for although Lespes's writings "were the delight of thousands … beyond the limits of his native country his fame has never been so great as it deserves."17 In this way, the headnote links the foreign author to the English literary marketplace, establishes the author's "native" reputation, and then invites the reader to allow the foreign author to enter the hallowed halls of English literary fame.
Yet some translated works received no editorial biography. The final work of fiction in the first issue is a story for children "from the French of Voltaire."18 As with Allen's short story at the beginning of the issue, the editorial staff provides no commentary. This is not because the story was intended for children, for translated children's stories in later issues include headnotes. Rather, as Voltaire spent several years in England interacting with British high society and even publishing works in English, the absence of a headnote places Voltaire with the "best of British writers" instead of among the "first foreign authors." The next translated short story without an editorial headnote appears in the second issue (February 1891). The number begins with a short story "from the Russian of Alexander Pushkin."19 Whereas Pushkin's work appeared with commentary in the first number, his next story lacks such treatment, providing those returning to the second issue with a sense of ownership: those who read the first issue need no persuasion to accept Pushkin. Similarly, the second short story in the issue includes no editorial biography because it completes Heyse's twopart series "The Maid of Treppi"; presumably, all that needed to be said had been said in the first number. Greenhough Smith maintains this pattern throughout the first volume. On those occasions when a foreign author's work first appears, an editorial headnote explains its importance, but subsequent stories need no such justification. Thus, even as the editors worked to increase circulation, they created a sense of a community of readers who were already "in the know" when the magazine included a foreign author for a second time.
To keep the editorial commentaries for "new" foreign authors fresh for returning readers, the tone of their introduction shifts bit by bit. To mark Balzac's first appearance in the Strand, the headnote emphasizes the story's uniqueness within the author's oeuvre: "[He] made but one study of an animal—a circumstance that gives [this story] an interest all its own."20 The third number includes a story "from the Spanish of Antonio Trueba," whom the editorial text likens to Robert Burns both in biography—their fathers were both peasant farmers—and literary merit.21 Trueba has a "genius like that of Burns" and began his career "like Burns" by writing popular songs "which stirred people's hearts" and "were hummed in every village street."22 In the span of a paragraph, Trueba is thrice compared to Burns. In the same issue, Alfred de Musset is likened to Byron five times, but "unlike Byron, his first book of poems was a complete success"—a bold declarative statement sure to attract the attention of both returning and new readers.23 Biographical notes for Guy de Maupassant (April 1891) and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (June 1891) comment on the authors' upper-class status. The headnote for de L'Isle-Adam brings together the common editorial focal points by establishing him as a nobleman, man of letters, and writer of great quality who "approaches more nearly to Edgar Allan Poe than to any other English author."24 The peculiar placement of "other" suggests that the Strand is appropriating the great American short story writer, just as it silently appropriates Voltaire.25 While the Strand's heavy reliance on short stories was risky, the editorial voice throughout the first volume suggests that its readers were open to non-serialized fiction. Rather than persuade the English audience to begin reading short fiction, the headnotes invite readers to accept the works of talented and popular foreign authors as just familiar enough to be "foreign" without quite being "other."
Marketplace Disinterest
The drop in translated works in volume two might seem attributable to the arrival of the Strand's most famous detective, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who made his first appearance in issue seven (July 1891). However, a look at the content make-up suggests that Greenhough Smith, in his role as literary editor, was already reshaping the periodical. Indeed, Newnes's reluctance to embrace Greenhough Smith's notion of a periodical composed entirely of short stories by foreign authors reflected Newnes's commercial acumen, for critical reception of the translated stories was mixed. First, let us briefly look at the general shift in the Strand's content and then explore the likely cause of that shift: the public reception of the Strand, especially during its inaugural year.
Volume one's six issues contain a total of 124 unique items, whereas volume two contains only 115. Individual issues vary slightly in item count, especially as gallery series (such as the ever popular "Portraits of Celebrities") expand or contract page counts over time. But the first number of each volume, issues one and seven, features fourteen unique items, allowing us to compare the percentage of Anglophone short stories, translated short stories, and non-fiction works (figure 3). While the January 1891 issue includes one Anglophone short story (7 percent), six translated stories (43 percent), and seven non-fiction items (50 percent), the July 1891 issue shows a significant change with three Anglophone stories (21.4 percent), two translated stories (14.3 percent), and nine works of non-fiction (64.3 percent). Sherlock Holmes first appeared in the July 1891 number, which happened to have two more items of non-fiction than did the first number, and Doyle's was one of the three stories written originally in English. The début of Doyle's famous detective, then, was part of a marked shift in the type of content published by the Strand halfway into its first year.
Over the first six months, the literary editor adjusted the balance between Anglophone and translated stories. February 1891 mirrors the January number, with one Anglophone story and six translated stories. March 1891 increases the combined total of stories to eight: three in English and five in translation. April 1891 sees the first big shift in favor of Anglophone short stories, with four such items and only two works in translation. And although the May and June 1891 numbers strike an even distribution, with three of each type of short story, the scales shift toward more fictional content in English as 1891 progresses. So while volume one includes a greater amount of translated fiction, that dominance is short lived; by its seventh issue the Strand contained more fiction in English than in translation, and the number of translated works continued to decline throughout the 1890s. Doyle's adventure series did not cause the reduction in translated texts; rather, the reduction resulted from the lukewarm reception
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of such content, leading the editor to gradually abandon the original notion of a periodical heavily weighted with stories by foreign authors.
Of course, George Newnes and Herbert Greenhough Smith understood the impact of public opinion on circulation. A look at the reception history of the Strand during its first year suggests that Greenhough Smith moved away from the short stories of the "greatest of French novelists" and the "most popular of Hungarian writers" because the market favored British authors.26 Our understanding of how reviewers received the early issues is, of course, limited by access. An advanced search in ProQuest's British Periodicals database and Gale's British Library Newspapers database for items that refer to "Strand Magazine" in "reviews" or "articles" in periodicals and in any section of newspapers between July 1890 and December 1891 can provide some understanding of the critical reception of the Strand. British Periodicals returned twentyseven items; British Library Newspapers returned a much more substantial 149 items, ranging from two-sentence advertisements to reviews of various issues of the Strand. While this cannot give us a complete picture of how the magazine's early issues were viewed by the public, it does illuminate how the magazine's gamble with translated fiction was perceived by the print media. The editorial decision to move away from translated works in the late spring of 1891, just prior to the arrival of the Sherlock Holmes series, correlates with a lack of critical interest in the Strand's experiment.
In November 1890, in anticipation of the Strand's January 1891 issue that would appear on newsstands in time for the Christmas season, short ads appeared in daily newspapers such as the liberal-leaning Pall Mall Gazette (1865–1923) and the conservative Standard (1827–1916). These notices, often placed at the end of a column, typically lack any language that identifies them as advertisements, instead simply highlighting the large print run underway: "The printing of the Strand Magazine has now begun, and will continue day and night until the day of publication."27 In contrast, the weekly Speaker (1890–1907) committed half a column of a two-column spread in the number for November 8, 1890, to announce the new monthly, which had "much in it that promises well" with "fiction galore; six complete short stories in the first number 'by the most noted writers in the world,' including 'a very exciting Railway Story by Grant Allen.'"28 The excerpted materials included in the review are set apart as from another source—most likely a press release from Newnes's office—but are still presented in the voice of the Speaker. Interestingly, although the quoted material refers to fiction by noted writers from around the world, the review reframes the text to highlight English author Grant Allen. Even as the Strand promoted its short stories in translation, the November reviews and advertisements either downplayed or ignored those texts.
When the Strand hit newsstands in December 1890, the reviews shifted focus to the content of the January 1891 issue. Reviews in periodicals such as the Athenæum (1828–1921) and newspapers such as the Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury (1813–1979) simply acknowledge the new monthly, state its cost, and address its focus on illustrated content.29 The Preston Chronicle (1812–94?) considers Newnes's new venture "in every respect worthy of him" and believes that it will "take its place in the front rank of our present day serial literature."30 Readers in Preston were likely surprised upon exploring the "worthy" first issue of the Strand to find no serialized literature and an editorial introduction that explicitly stated the omission as intentional.31 The Preston Chronicle's failure to comment on works in translation could be a similarly intentional omission in a bid to encourage local readers to view the Strand as other monthlies before it, or it could simply be a symptom of a reviewer's rapid perusal of one of the plethora of constantly launching and revamping periodicals in the everexpanding marketplace. Either way, the Preston Chronicle does not address the Strand's inclusion of foreign authors as a cornerstone of the publication or an intentional move to stand apart from its competitors.
In contrast, the London-based Reynolds's Newspaper (1851–1967) notices the Strand's fiction from continental Europe: "There are also tales by well-known authors, and a serial called 'The Maid of Treppi,' from the German of Paul Heyse."32 The anonymous reviewer draws the reader's attention to the inclusion of serialized fiction, and the Strand's initial treatment of the two-part story supports this slight inaccuracy. The story begins with the heading "Chapter I" and ends with "(to be continued)."33 Despite the editorial policy against serialized fiction, the first issue does hint that at least one story is serialized. Little do the readers or reviewers know that Heyse's story—at least as typeset by the Strand—has no chapter two but instead simply a second half that is printed in the February 1891 issue. Beyond showing the familiar assumption that readers wanted serialized fiction (and that the Strand would include it), the review in Reynolds's Newspaper suggests that a short story translated from German would interest periodical consumers in London. The reviewer's language does not explicitly state that Heyse is among the "well-known authors," but naming the German writer in the same sentence implies this status.34 Surprisingly, this weekly broadsheet that "appealed to … radicals" did not mention the one English author to be found in the January 1891 issue: Grant Allen.35 Allen's most radical novel, The Woman Who Did (1895), would not appear for another four years, but in December 1890 Allen already had a reputation for pushing socio-cultural boundaries in his writing. In this light, the notice of Heyse's story seems especially significant. The review in Reynolds's Newspaper reveals that, at least in London, the potential consumer of the Strand would in some way value the works by foreign authors that Greenhough Smith sought to publish.
As noted previously, the promise of a short story by Grant Allen did warrant comment in the November 8, 1890, number of the Speaker. But upon reading the first issue of the Strand in December, the tone of the Speaker's review shifted drastically. Whereas the earlier review highlighted "fiction galore" and prestigious authors, the December review finds much to be desired:
We are cosmopolitan in sympathy, and do not complain in the least that half the number is made up of translated stories of foreign authorship. Nor do we cavil at the obvious cheapness of this way of filling a magazine. But cheapness is one thing; cheap-and-nastiness another. Mr. Newnes ought not to take a story like Daudet's L'Enfant Espion—to take one instance only—and have it complacently turned into the first English that comes handy. Even the privilege of gazing on a portrait of Mr. Rider Haggard as he appeared at three years of age will hardly compensate the French purchasers of the Strand Magazine for this insult to their language.36
This reviewer probably has ulterior motives for castigating the "foreign author" experiment. A new weekly itself in 1890, the Speaker maintained a circulation of roughly 4,000 copies and struggled financially.37 Yet the Speaker's criticism of the poorly executed translation of a quality story highlights the challenge at the heart of a periodical committed to regularly publishing a large quantity of works in translation: each one must be translated prior to beginning the publication process.38 Lesa Scholl asserts that "translation was valued professionally by women in the nineteenth century," for "due to the convention of anonymity in publishing … they could stand on relatively equal professional terms with the men of letters."39 Yet the very anonymity that allowed women to earn an income as translators also placed them in the shadows of the periodical marketplace. The (often female) production of translation lies outside the scope of this article, but the Strand's inclusion of works in translation opens compelling lines of inquiry into the changing landscape of international copyright law, imperialism, and the underpaid labor of translators. Even as by-lines became the norm, translators often remained anonymous, and the Strand maintained this silence during its brief foray into translated fiction. Other than the Speaker's snarky claim about the Strand's low-quality translation of Daudet, the reviews also remained silent about the labor involved in publishing translated works.
Marie Lebert's ongoing work on translators, A Dictionary of Famous Translators through the Ages, seeks to document those who worked to transfer ideas between languages. Eight of the thirty-one famous women translators chronicled by Lebert were potentially professionally active during the 1890s, but none of their names appear in the letterpress of the Strand.40 Of course, given these translators' high profiles in the literary and scientific worlds, it is unlikely that the Strand would employ them to produce what the Speaker referred to as "cheap and nasty" translations for the mass-market readership.41 And while this criticism might arise from the reviewer's frustration at a low-quality translation of a famous writer's short story, it may also reflect an implicit bias against translated works. Sherry Simon highlights how "Judeo-Christian Western history link[s] women to the act of translation as both inferior and derivative."42 The fin de siæcle marks a significant moment in the cultural debates surrounding women, with the Strand entering the marketplace as a periodical for the bourgeois, often conservative middle classes. While the periodical's content pushed back gently against some norms, it may well have maintained the bias against women translators in its editorial decision to omit the by-lines of translators in its early issues (figure 4). Furthermore, the bias against translation and the perceived inferiority of anyone other than authors and illustrators may have caused female translators to actively avoid linking their by-lines to translation.
The November 1893 issue is the first to include a translator's by-line: E. A. Brayley Hodgetts, for his translation of Mikhail Lermontov's 1837 Russian story "Ashik-Kerib: A Turkish Tale for Children." Edward Arthur Brayley Hodgetts began his career as a journalist in the 1880s, then in the
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early 1890s he shifted into writing non-fiction about his travels in Russia. Including Brayley Hodgetts, the Strand explicitly credits a translator only sixteen times during its first decade of publication, and ten of these credits belong to one translator: Alys Hallard.43 Hallard's by-line first appears in the December 1894 number as the translator of M. Blowitz's French story "A Miracle." According to C19: The Nineteenth Century Index, between 1895 and 1912 Hallard's by-line appears in fifty unique periodical items, almost all of which are translator credits. Most of her translations are of French texts, but she also translated Italian works. In addition to her work for the Strand between 1895 and 1906, her translations appeared in many British and American periodicals, including the Englishwoman's Review, the Idler, Cornhill Magazine, the Edinburgh Review, and the North American Review. Between 1897 and 1918, according to both C19 and The Virtual International Authority File, Hallard also translated twelve books. However, Marie Lambert's Dictionary of Famous Translators does not include Hallard, despite Hallard's work on prominent books such as René Doumic's 1910 biography of George Sand. In fact, Hallard only appears in contemporary scholarship as a footnote; searches for Hallard in Proquest's Literature Online and MLA International Bibliography databases produce only two hits. Nevertheless, her name was recognizable enough for the Strand to list her by-line as a translator when very few other translators—at least in the eyes of Greenhough Smith's editorial staff and their assumed readership—warranted such treatment.
Returning to how the press discussed the Strand's translated works, let us turn to the arc of reviews during the first six months of publication. In early January 1891, the Review of Reviews (1890–1936) published its assessment of the new monthly, in which it addressed the Strand's lack of serialized content and its use of "translations from short stories from the French, German, and Russian. The first number went off with an immense rush, owing to the coloured supplement."44 Here again the translated short stories are acknowledged as a significant feature, but the reviewer emphasizes the attraction of color illustrations, a feature not planned for every issue. The works from foreign authors may be of interest to readers, but they are not the key to the Strand's initial success. By May 1891 the Review of Reviews becomes more critical, stating that despite the Strand's "high standard of excellence … the element of fiction [in the April number] is very considerably diminished."45 The review does not address the sources of said fiction, but by this time the Strand's number of translated stories had significantly diminished. After publishing five or six short stories in translation in the first three issues, only two appear in the fourth issue. The overall count for fiction remains on par with the other issues, but the balance tips toward Anglophone stories. This is the only review to respond negatively in any notable way to the dip in translated content.
The May and June issues present a three-to-three ratio of Anglophone and translated short stories, though the Review of Reviews oddly claims that "in the May number there is more fiction than in the April number."46 What caused this perceived difference? Perhaps, to the harried reviewer flipping through the many periodicals in the "to review" pile, the May issue lacked some of the visual markers of stories in translation: of three such works, only two had a by-line stating their original language and none included the characteristic editorial headnote. The May 1891 review in the Graphic (1869–1932) consists of a single sentence focused on the periodical's non-fiction features, but it is preceded on the same page by a short piece on "Fiction" that complains "that the supply of good short stories is lamentably deficient."47 This complaint suggests a critical demand for short stories, presumably ones in English. The reviewer goes on to note, "In France … the short story has its place as a separate and special form of art."48 Even as the Graphic praises the French short story form, it ignores the two short stories by French authors published in the issue of the Strand that is under review a few column inches below.49 Rather than praising the periodical for including the special art form created by French writers, the reviewer for the Graphic completely ignores fiction in the Strand; in so doing, it silently chastises the new periodical for its focus on foreign authorship.
Conclusion
Despite Herbert Greenhough Smith's belief that a British periodical could thrive by primarily publishing works by foreign authors, his audience was not particularly interested in the idea beyond its initial novelty. As the Strand established its position in the periodical marketplace, it began to take heed of reviewers' silences and critiques. In June 1891 the Graphic's single-sentence review of the Strand reads simply, "The Strand Magazine is improving, as it has now more original work, and fewer translations than formerly."50 Although the works in translation were often new to the British reader, they were by their very nature unoriginal. Furthermore, no matter how much the headnotes tried to establish the value of translated stories, these works simply were not British. The editorial maneuverings within the headnotes, such as the strongly emphasized similarities between Antonio Trueba and Robert Burns in the March 1891 issue, could not overcome this bias against translated works. Such maneuverings, however, raise questions about the Strand's editorial assumptions. Beyond justifying non-British authors, did the editorial staff have to contend with a hierarchy of nations? Did a Spanish author have less cache than a French, German, or Russian one? The editorial shift away from translated short stories created more and more opportunities for British authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and L. T. Meade to thrive by publishing original short stories in what rapidly became the premier publication for popular fiction. These authors catered to the Strand's middlebrow readership in a way that translated works could not. The extent of such catering is best exemplified in Doyle's capitulation to his readership through his resurrection of Sherlock Holmes after killing him off in 1893. Had Greenhough Smith's experiment been successful, the Strand as we know it—and by extension the world of detective fiction—would look vastly different.
NOTES
1. Pound, A Maypole in the Strand, 6. In his foreword, Pound states that his reminiscences start in early 1942, about fifty years into the Strand's publication run.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 89–90. Greenhough Smith's desire to publish only foreign short stories formed while he worked for Temple Bar. This longstanding publication rejected his idea; critic Walter Allen credits it with publishing the first "modern British short story," Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night," which appeared in the October 1877 issue (Pringle and Ashley, introduction, 4). Stevenson's stories, as David Pringle and Mike Ashley note, are the first ventures into the literary form already flourishing in continental Europe and America.
4. [Newnes], "Introduction," 3.
5. Ashley, The Age of the Storytellers, 197.
6. Other than those biographing foreign authors, the editorial headnote only appears for articles sanctioned or written by those attached to the royal family. For example, see "Queen Victoria's Dolls" in the July 1892 issue.
7. Pringle and Ashley, introduction to The Age of the Storytellers, 1.
8. Ibid., 4n1. For history of the development of the short story in Britain during the nineteenth century, see Ludlow and Styler, "Elizabeth Gaskell and the Short Story." Ludlow and Styler point out that the short form was employed by British authors throughout the long nineteenth century. For discussion of the role of the periodical press in the development of the short story, see Margree, "Metanarratives of Authorship in Fin-de-Siècle Popular Fiction."
9. Ashley, The Age of the Storytellers, 197.
10. The First World War greatly affected the availability of content written in English. During the war years, short stories in translation returned to the Strand. Newnes's death in 1910 may also have contributed to this return.
11. [Newnes], "Introduction," 3.
12. Editorial headnote, January 1891, 31.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Editorial headnote, January 1891, 87; Editorial headnote, January 1891, 57.
16. Editorial headnote, January 1891, 78.
17. Ibid.
18. Editorial headnote, January 1891, 105.
19. Editorial headnote, February 1891, 115.
20. Editorial headnote, February 1891, 210.
21. Editorial headnote, March 1891, 248.
22. Ibid.
23. Editorial headnote, March 1891, 318.
24. Editorial headnote, June 1891, 559.
25. Similarly, the Strand published the works of a handful of American writers without editorial headnotes.
26. Editorial headnote, February 1891, 210; Editorial headnote, February 1891, 220. These notes refer to Balzac and Moritz Jokai, respectively.
27. Advertisement, 6.
28. "The Week," November 8, 1890, 518.
29. "Our Library Table," 815; "New Books," 3.
30. "Literary Notices," 3.
31. [Newnes], "Introduction," 3.
32. "Reviews of Books," 2.
33. Heyse, "The Maid of Treppi," 57, 69; italics in the original.
34. According to Jewish Virtual Library, Paul Heyse was "considered an honored and prominent writer of short stories" ("Paul Heyse").
35. Shirley, "Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper (1850–1851); Reynolds's Newspaper (1851–1967)," 540.
36. "The Week," December 13, 1890, 659.
37. Kent, "Speaker (1890–1907)," 587.
38. There is also, of course, the issue of international copyright law. For an overview of the evolving legal treatment of works in translation, see Seville's The Internationalisation of Copyright Law.
39. Scholl, Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman, 1. See also Peterson's Becoming a Woman of Letters.
40. Lebert, Dictionary of Famous Translators, n.p. Those listed are Charlotte Guest (1812–95), Anna Swanwick (1813–99), Matilda Hays (1820–97), Clémence Royer (1830–1902), Katherine Wormeley (1830–1908), Francesca Alexander (1837–1917), Ellen Francis Mason (1846–1930), and Eleanor Marx (1855–98).
41. "The Week," December 13, 1890, 659.
42. As quoted in Scholl, Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman, 3.
43. The other six translators are, in order of appearance from 1893: E. Brayley Hodgetts, Constance Beerbohm, G. H. Woodhouse, E. Dyke, Margaret Maitland, and T. R. Edwards.
44. "The Strand Magazine," January 1891, 29.
45. "The Strand Magazine," May 1891, 463.
46. Ibid.
47. "Fiction," 498. The review of the Strand appears on the same page under "Miscellaneous Articles." The review was published on May 2, so it presumably discusses the April 1891 issue. However, the language in the singlesentence review is so vague that it could refer to any issue of the Strand.
48. Ibid.
49. The April 1891 issue included a short story by Guy De Maupassant and one by Jacques Normand.
50. "The Belated Ones," 636.
Advertisement. Pall Mall Gazette, November 22, 1890, 6.
Ashley, Mike. The Age of the Storytellers: British Popular Fiction Magazines, 1880–1950. London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2006.
"The Belated Ones." Graphic 43 (June 6, 1891): 636.
Chan, Winnie. The Economy of the Short Story in British Periodicals of the 1890s. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 31.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 57.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 78.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 87.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 105.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (February 1891): 115.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (February 1891): 210.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (February 1891): 220.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (March 1891): 248.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (March 1891): 318.
Editorial headnote. Strand Magazine 1 (June 1891): 559.
"Fiction." Graphic 43 (May 2, 1891): 498.
Heyse, Paul. "The Maid of Treppi." Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 57–69.
Kent, Christopher Andrew. "Speaker (1890–1907)." In The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, edited by Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor, 587. London: British Library, 2009.
Lebert, Marie. A Dictionary of Famous Translators through the Ages. Self-published, OpenSource, 2017.
"Literary Notices." Preston Chronicle, December 20, 1890, 3.
Ludlow, Elizabeth, and Rebecca Styler. "Elizabeth Gaskell and the Short Story." Gaskell Journal 29 (2015): 1–22.
Margree, Victoria. "Metanarratives of Authorship in Fin-de-Siècle Popular Fiction: 'Is That All You Do, Write Stories?'" English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 59, no. 3 (2016): 362–89.
Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009.
"New Books." Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, December 20, 1890, 3.
[Newnes, George]. "Introduction." Strand Magazine 1 (January 1891): 3.
"Our Library Table." Athenæum, December 13, 1890, 814–15.
"Paul Heyse." Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/paul-heyse.
Peterson, Linda H. Becoming a Woman of Letters: Myths of Authorship and Facts of the Victorian Market. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Pound, Reginald. A Maypole in the Strand. London: Ernest Benn, 1948.
Pringle, David, and Mike Ashley. Introduction to The Age of the Storytellers: British Popular Fiction Magazines, 1880–1950, by Mike Ashley, 1–16. London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2006.
"Queen Victoria's Dolls." Strand Magazine 4 (July 1892): 222–38.
"Reviews of Books." Reynolds's Newspaper, December 21, 1890, 2.
Scholl, Lesa. Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
Seville, Catherine. The Internationalisation of Copyright Law: Books, Buccaneers and the Black Flag in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Shirley, Michael. "Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper (1850–1851); Reynolds's Newspaper (1851–1967)." In The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, edited by Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor, 540–41. London: British Library, 2009.
"The Strand Magazine." Review of Reviews 3 (January 1891): 29.
"The Strand Magazine." Review of Reviews 3 (May 1891): 463.
"The Week." Speaker: The Liberal Review 2 (November 8, 1890): 518–20.
"The Week." Speaker: The Liberal Review 2 (December 13, 1890): 658–59.
Mercedes Sheldon
Independent Scholar
Copyright Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Summer 2019