Wednesday 7 December 2011

Dutch Translation of The Female Spectator

An essay by Finny Bottinga published in the same year as my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood, but not seen by me until this morning (!), discusses a Dutch translation of The Female Spectator—a translation missing from my Bibliography. Rats. But kudos to Bottinga.

The essay is "Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator and its Dutch translation De Engelsche Spectatrice, in I Have Heard About You: Foreign Women's Writing Crossing the Dutch Border: From Sappho to Selma Lagerlöf, ed. Suzanna van Dijk (Hilversum, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2004), 217–24. (Now available online here, but no copy of this collection of essays is held in Australia, so I guess I can be forgiven for missing it.)

The identification of this translation was likely first made by Bottinga in her Masters thesis: Tea-Tables and Coffee-Houses: The Position of Eighteenth-Century Women in the Spectator, the Female Spectator and in the Dutch translations of these periodicals: A comparative study (MA thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden 1996).

There appears to have been two editions of the translation (see here and here), the main details of which are

De Engelsche spectatrice of Britsche leermeesteresse der zeeden. Na den vyfden druk uit het Engelsch vertaalt (Te Amsterdam: by Jacobus Kok, in de Binne-Bantemerstraat, 1762-63), 4 vols [No.1 (1762)–no.17 (1763)]. Held EuNA [OK 62-9576-9578; OK 93-53 (dl III)].

De Engelsche spectatrice of Britsche leermeesteresse der zeeden. Na den vyfden druk uit het Engelsch vertaalt (Te Amsterdam: by Jacobus Kok, in de Lange Niesel, 1775), 2 vols. Held EuNA [OK 93-54-55].

The Bijzondere Collecties of the EuNA (Library of the University of Amsterdam) descriptions are not clear enough for me to distinguish issues and editions, but I will obviously have to take a visit of Amsterdam soon.

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