Anna Swanwick

Anna Swanwick (22 June 1813 – 2 November 1899) was an English author and feminist.

Anna Swanwick was the youngest daughter of John Swanwick and his wife, Hannah Hilditch. She was born in Liverpool on 22 June 1813. The Swanwicks descended from Philip Henry, the 17th century nonconformist divine. Anna was educated chiefly at home, but, wishing to carry on her education beyond the typical age for girls in this country at that time, she went in 1839 to Berlin, where she studied German and Greek, and gained knowledge of Hebrew.

She returned to England in 1843 and began translating some of the German dramatists. Her first publication, Selections from the Dramas of Goethe and Schiller appeared in 1843. The selections included Goethe's Torquato Tasso and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Schiller's Maid of Orleans. In 1850, she released a volume of translations from Goethe containing the first part of Faust, Egmont, and the two plays of the former volume. The translations are in blank verse. In 1878, she published the second part of Faust; the two parts with Moritz Retzsch's illustrations appeared together in one volume the same year. Miss Swanwick's Faust passed through many editions and was included in Bohn's series of translations from foreign classics. Her English version is accurate and spirited, and is regarded as one of the best in existence.

About 1850, Bunsen advised her to try her hand at translating from the Greek, with the result that in 1865 she published a blank-verse translation of the Trilogy of Aeschylus, and in 1873 of the whole of his dramas. The choruses are in rhymed metres. Her translation has passed through many editions and ranks high among English versions. It keeps fairly close to the original.

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