Aylmer and Louise Maude (was Re: Prayers For Lexicon Steve)

[Tim Regan]

Hi All,

Alla wrote:
>>> My beloved War and Peace for example has A LOT of characters, and 
quite a few american friends complained to me how hard it is to keep 
track of them.  I know, maybe I should put the characters in order of 
alphabet and summarise what all families in the book are about?
You think had Lev Tolstoy had he been alive would have been happy  
with me?<<<

Yes – very much so. I love War and Peace too (though I've only read 
it once as a young man). The translation I read was by Aylmer and 
Louise Maude and included exactly the addition you are thinking of. 
At the front was an alphabetical list of everyone's names (and some 
characters are known by more than one name) and a very brief 
description of who they are. It made W&P much easier to read. Aylmer 
and Louise Maude were indeed working on the translations during 
Tolstoy's life (he said of them "Better translators [...] could not 
be invented"). If the Wikipedia entry on them is to be believed 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylmer_and_Louise_Maude ) Tolstoy 
waived his rights to translations so he clearly wasn't trying to 
hoard derivative works to himself.

Cheers,

Dumbledad.

PS While I did love the Aylmer and Louise Maude translation I am 
tempted by that new one that got rave reviews – have you tried it 
Alla?