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Abstract
A second English translation of Alexander von Humboldt's account of travel to South America, the Relation historique (1814–25), was published between 1852 and 1853. Appearing some 30 years after the first seven-volume translation (1814–29) by Helen Maria Williams, this second rendering of the Personal Narrative by Thomasina Ross was an abridged version that aimed to make Humboldt's travelogue more relevant to the mid-century reader. This translation has largely been overlooked by Humboldt scholars, despite it being a far more affordable, accessible and popular edition. I discuss here how Ross's revisions can be understood within a larger process of rereading and revision that responded to critics’ assessments of the first translation. Emphasising the status of the Personal Narrative as a text in flux, I assess how Ross modernised it to meet the demands of a new readership, recasting the image that Humboldt had constructed of himself as a travelling scientist, scientific writer and member of the international scientific community.
Notes
Notes
1. Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences etc. 1833 (March 6, 1852), 229.
2. Literary Gazette, 1833, 229.
3. Literary Gazette, 1833, 229.
4. Literary Gazette, 1833, 229.
5. Michael Cronin, Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), particularly chapter 4.
6. Cronin, Across the Lines, 23.
7. Cronin, Across the Lines, 23.
8. James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 152.
9. Secord, Victorian Sensation, 152.
10. Secord, Victorian Sensation, 152.
11. British Critic 12 (1819): 337–61 (337); Eclectic Review 26 (1826): 289–309 (290).
12. Monthly Review 79 (1816): 1–16 (14–15).
13. For a list of later reprints of the Ross translation in Britain and America, see Horst Fiedler and Ulrike Leitner, Alexander von Humboldts Schriften: Bibliographie der selbständig erschienenen Werke (Berlin: Akademie, 2000), 109. On retirement in 1864, Bohn sold his libraries (and stereoplates) to George Bell, who continued to publish the Ross translation either under the name of Bohn or Bell and Daldy. It also appeared in a Routledge edition in 1895 as part of Sir John Lubbock's ‘List of Hundred Books’ considered most worth reading.
14. Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, abridged and translated by Jason Wilson, intro. by Malcolm Nicolson (London: Penguin Classics, 1995), lix.
15. Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, trans. Elise Otté, 5 vols (London: Bohn, 1848–58), vol. 1 (1848), xiv. All further references are to this translation.
16. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, intro. and ed. James Secord (London: Penguin, 1997), xxxix.
17. Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. 1, xiv.
18. Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. 1, xiv.
19. Ottmar Ette, ‘Eine “Gemütsverfassung moralischer Unruhe” – Humboldtian Writing: Alexander von Humboldt und das Schreiben in der Moderne’, in Alexander von Humboldt – Aufbruch in die Moderne, ed. Ottmar Ette, Ute Hermans, Bernd M. Scherer and Christian Suckow (Berlin: Akademie, 2001), 33–55 (35).
20. Ette, Aufbruch, 35.
21. Cronin, Across the Lines, 109.
22. Ottmar Ette, Alexander von Humboldt und die Globalisierung: Das Mobile des Wissens (Frankfurt: Insel, 2009), 37.
23. Ulrich Päßler, Ein ‘Diplomat aus den Wäldern des Orinoko’: Alexander von Humboldt als Mittler zwischen Preußen und Frankreich (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009), particularly chapters 3 and 8.
24. Letter to H. G. Bronn of 14 February 1860, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 2698, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-2698.html (accessed July 31, 2009).
25. Letter to Ernst Dieffenbach of 9 February 1847, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 1059, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1059.html (accessed July 31, 2009).
26. William Jerdan, The Autobiography of William Jerdan, 2 vols (London: Arthur Hall, 1852), vol. 2, 235.
27. The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 3, ed. Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 353.
28. Cronin, Across the Lines, 114.
29. Notes and Queries, 117 (1852): 94.
30. Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799–1804, trans. and ed. Thomasina Ross, 3 vols (London: Bohn, 1852–53), vol. 1, iii. References hereafter in the text with the abbreviation PN TR.
31. Dwight Atkinson, Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675–1975 (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999), 77.
32. Atkinson, Scientific Discourse, 77.
33. Atkinson, Scientific Discourse, 78.
34. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 342.
35. Shapin, Social History of Truth, particularly 65–125.
36. Ellen Valle, A Collective Intelligence: The Life Sciences in the Royal Society as a Scientific Discourse Community, 1665–1965 (Turku: University of Turku, 1999), 144.
37. Valle, A Collective Intelligence, 132.
38. Valle, A Collective Intelligence, 232.
39. Valle, A Collective Intelligence, 291.
40. Alexander von Humboldt, Relation historique du Voyage aux Régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, 3 vols (Paris: Schoell/Maze/Smith, 1814–25), vol. 1 (1814), 20. References hereafter in the text with the abbreviation RH.
41. Alexander de Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, During the Years 1799–1804, trans. Helen Maria Williams (London: Longman et al., 1814–26), vol. 1 (1814), xxxvi. References hereafter in the text with the abbreviation PN HMW.