The first Russian translations of Thomas Hardy's prose

Thomas Hardy's works were translated in Russia for the first time at the beginning of the 1890s. Russian translators paid their attention to the latest volume of short stories written by that time (1891), A Group of Noble Dames, rather than to the works that had brought popularity to the author in Great Britain. The volume is organized around the core provided by a meeting of the Antiquarian Club, at which stormbound members take turns in telling tales drawn from local legends of noble dames. The members are men of different social status, ages, life experiences, occupations and features of character. All this is definitely expressed through their stories and influences both the choice of the plot and the narrative manner. A Group of Noble Dames consists of ten stories. The first translated story was issued in the magazine Vestnik inostrannoy literatury in March 1892. It was the third story of the volume titled in the magazine as "Types of English Ladies. The Marchioness of Stonehenge. By the Rural Dean". The name of the translator is unknown. The next story was translated and published in June in the same magazine. It was the second story of the volume titled in Russian as "Types of English Ladies. Barbara of the House of Grebe. By the Old Surgeon". The author of the translation is unknown as well. Despite the titles imply something that unites the stories, there are no other links integrating them. The stories in Russian are presented as separate works with no regards to some club meeting uniting them in one unit. Thus, the narrators of the stories (the club members) are excluded from the Russian texts along with all their comments, opinions and attitudes which often express the author's position. Though the narrator was deleted from the stories, the plots were fully conveyed, and a great number of narration details were preserved. The plot being fully translated, the characters manifested through their actions in the stories (for example, Milly in The Marchioness of Stonehenge) have little differences between the Russian and English versions. However, those characters that were written mostly by means of narrator's description are rendered into Russian in a more smooth and neutral manner. Thus, the intensity of the conflicts between the characters appears to be less critical and strong in the Russian texts. It should be noted that the specific dialect which Hardy paid attention to and which is very important for making the atmosphere authentic and historic, could hardly be conveyed in any other languages. So the Russian texts have no markers of dialectal speech. Other stories from A Group of Noble Dames were not published at that period. The author assumes that the whole volume was not supposed to be published at all. The aim of the magazine was to introduce the popular contemporary English writer to Russian readers. There are only two more stories from the volume to be translated in Russian hereafter.

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