Les Frères Anglais, roman traduit de l'anglais, par Mme Élisabeth de B..., traducteur de la Dame du Lac, etc. etc.

First edition of the French translation by Élisabeth de Bon, gathering in 2 volumes the 4 parts of this anonymous English novel originally printed in 1809, which according to André Marc in his Dictionnaire des romans anciens et modernes of 1819, is the work of Anna Maria Porter, younger sister of the novelist Jane Porter. The Porter sisters, contemporaries of Jane Austen and famous before the Brontës, were close to the Scottish poet Walter Scott.

Contemporary full brown tree sheep, smooth spines divided into compartments richly gilt in decorative rolls of laurels, annulets and lozenges, two compartments with a lozenge network formed by interlacing fillets with fleurons at the corners, red and green morocco lettering-piece and numbering-piece, blind-tooled fillet border to boards, gilt fillet to turn-ins, edges sprinkled red, marbled endpapers in pebbled pattern.

Some light surface wear and minor offsetting to boards, corners slightly worn. On volume 1, a charming error in the decorative roll at foot of spine, corrected by the binder. On volume 2, small piece of leather at the edge of the numbering-piece slightly detaching.

Scattered foxing and faint marginal damp-staining to upper margins. In volume 3, two minor marginal repairs to half-title and p. 8.

Several period textual corrections in brown ink and pencil: volume 1 p. 131, volume 2 p. 90, and volume 3 p. 21.

In the early nineteenth century, English novels were widely translated into French. According to the critic signing as "E." in the Journal de l'Empire, Les Frères Anglais is a success, and according to another reviewer, writing for the Gazette de France, the French translation, as much as the original text, deserves praise:

"We have already had the opportunity in this Gazette to praise the translator. English novels are much vaunted, but the choice is vast; some prove mediocre and even detestable. This one does honour to the good sense of Madame Elisabeth de B***. The situations are lively and varied, the characters well drawn; the work pleases and holds one's attention from beginning to end." 

Gazette de France, December 4, 1814

"What astonishes readers who cannot transport themselves into the society whose customs are depicted, and who insist on judging everything by the habits of their own circle, is the liberty of young English ladies. If their novels offer a faithful picture of their manners and habits, these young women converse familiarly in tête-à-tête with their suitors; they write to them, even give them their portraits; they tell their parents without ceremony that their heart is engaged. Never would a French demoiselle make such a frank avowal; at most she allows her secret to be guessed."

Journal de l'Empire, May 10, 1815

(our own translation)

Two women of letters were behind this literary success: Élisabeth de Bon, a translator renowned in her lifetime, also a novelist, short-story writer and co-proprietor of the periodical the Mercure de France, and a mysterious authoress. The name of Anna Maria Porter, absent from the title-page, would be revealed by the bookseller André Marc as that of the author in 1819.

Precocious and prolific, Anna Maria began writing and publishing books during adolescence, nearly a decade before her elder sister Jane. In 1807 she published The Hungarian Brothers, and in 1809 she is thought to have written The English Brothers. These two works, with their near-identical titles like false twins, are the starting point, according to Richard Bolster, for the attribution of the latter novel to Anna Maria Porter. It was precisely the same translator, Élisabeth de Bon, who undertook the translation of the third edition of The Hungarian Brothers in 1818, and in 1815, that of another of the author's works, The Recluse of Norway. The English Brothers thus forms part of the long list of translations produced by Élisabeth de Bon from the rich repertoire of the celebrated British writer. Porter had moreover already published some of her works anonymously before 1809, as was customary at the time, notably Artless Tales and Walsh Colville.

Henri Beyle, then aged twenty-seven, had published nothing when he became one of Anna Maria Porter's most enthusiastic readers. In 1810, he recorded the following reflections in his diary:

"This morning, perfectly alone, I was occupied and happy until half past one when I write this. My situation, free from all passion, was nevertheless such that the company of any being whatsoever could scarcely have added to my happiness. I was enjoying my feelings and thoughts, in the English manner. [...] For my part, I was very happy this morning and moved to tears perusing an extract of The English brothers, a new english novel in the Bibliotek Britannic, n° of februar 1810."

(our own translation)

According to Richard Bolster, Henri Beyle would remain intimately connected to this text over time, and more specifically to the forty-odd pages of the narrative devoted to the character of the Italian Eleonora of Parma. These latter pages are thought to have inspired his masterpiece La Chartreuse de Parme. For a long time, the sources of his novel remained partly mysterious due to the opaque answer provided by the author himself on the subject:

"I wrote La Chartreuse with the death of Sandrino in view, a fact which had deeply moved me in nature." 

Letter from Stendhal to Balzac, Correspondance, text established by V. del Litto, Gallimard, 1968, III, p. 396.

"The page I write gives me the idea for the next; thus was La Chartreuse made. I was thinking of the death of Sandrino, that alone made me undertake the novel. I saw later the beauty of the difficulty to be overcome." 

Manuscript note in the drafts of Lamiel, May 25, 1840.

(our own translation)

Richard Bolster pointed out the character was not found "empirically", inspired by an everyday occurrence that the author might have seen or experienced, but was discovered through reading The English Brothers. Stendhal imagined this character from the story of Eleonora, whose narrative, set in Parma, strongly recalls the intrigues of Fabrice and Clelia (Sandrino retrouvé: la fin d'un mystère stendhalien, Richard Bolster, Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, 94e Année, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1994), pp. 231-240). 

Rare first edition of the French translation of The English Brothers, attributed in 1819 to the prolific early-nineteenth-century writer Anna Maria Porter, which inspired one of Stendhal's greatest works.