The Authorship of the First English Translation of Goethe

Abstract

ABSTRACT The anonymous translation of Werther that was published by James Dodsley (1724-1797) in 1779 has been attributed to both Daniel Malthus (1730-1800) and Richard Graves (1715-1804). The case for the latter can be appreciably strengthened if the Dodsley Werther is re-examined in the context of Graves’s life and work. The death of his wife in 1777 precipitated an emotional crisis, which could have led him to identify with Goethe’s protagonist. The Dodsley Werther exhibits, moreover, some notable similarities to Graves’s Columella (1779) and Lucubrations (1786) (both of which are indicative of a complex, ambivalent attitude to Goethe’s novel). In the light of these findings, the evidence for Malthus’s authorship of the translation should now be subjected to a thoroughgoing reappraisal.