Constance Garnett

Born Dec. 19, 1862, in Brighton; died Dec. 18, 1946, in London. English translator of Russian literature. Wife of the critic E. Garnett.

Garnett studied at Cambridge University, and she participated in the activities of the Fabian Society. In the early 1890’s she became close to the Russian revolutionary emigré circles in London (S. M. Stepniak-Kravchinskii and P. A. Kropotkin and, later, V. I. Zasulich and V. N. Figner). In 1894 and 1904 she came to Russia and visited L. N. Tolstoy and V. G. Korolenko. Her first translation was A Common Story, by I. A. Goncharov (1894). She translated into English the collected works of I. S. Turgenev (1894-99), N. V. Gogol (1922-28), F. M. Dostoevsky (1912-16), and A. P. Chekhov (1916-22), the novels of L. N. Tolstoy (1901-02), and My Past and Thoughts, by A. I. Herzen (1924-27)—about 70 volumes in all.