Literary Activities
To a large extent, it was Louise who worked on Tolstoy's fiction, and Aylmer who tackled his philosophical writing. The "retired carpet manufacturer" brought out a translation of What is Art? in 1899, while Louise’s translation of Resurrection was published in 1900 by the Brotherhood Publishing Company. Some of their work was published by the OUP World Classics Series, but they also used the smaller firm of Grant Richards, and Constable published Aylmer Maude's two volume Life of Tolstoy in 1908 and 1910.
Aylmer Maude handled most of the practical affairs related to publication, corresponding often with George Herbert Perris and Charles F. Cazenove at the Literary Agency in London to discuss publishers, funding and other business. His prolific correspondence included not only letters to friends, and lobbying letters for causes he supported, but also letters to correct details in newspaper reviews: the Maudes disapproved of the "French" spelling Tolstoi, for instance.
Maude wanted to publish a complete collected works of Tolstoy and enlisted his friends and acquaintances to help campaign for funding and support. There were many competing editions of the more popular works, some of them "very incompetent", according to Bernard Shaw, since Tolstoy had waived his rights over translation. Shaw wrote to The Times asking readers to support the project by "spontaneously giving it the privileges of a copyright edition" and "subscribing for complete sets", to make up for the “miscarriage of Tolstoy’s public-spirited intentions". Shaw’s signature was followed by many more, including literary figures like Arnold Bennett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gilbert Murray and H. G. Wells. Thomas Hardy added his own independent letter, offering support though he did not feel equipped to comment on all the points in the main letter.
After a protesting letter from an admirer of Constance Garnett's translations, the correspondence continued, with Maude asserting that "Tolstoy authorized my wife’s translation" of Resurrection and Shaw insisting on the need for a complete collected works, going beyond the "great novels" which were "sure to get themselves translated everywhere", since other translators had "picked the plums out of the pudding". He went on to compare Maude’s "devoted relation" to Tolstoy with that of Henrik Ibsen's translator William Archer, or Richard Wagner's Ashton Ellis.
The Oxford University Press Centenary Edition of Tolstoy came out in 21 volumes between 1928 and 1937, with the complete collection available at "9 guineas the set".
Both husband and wife lived to see the final volume of the collected works published the year before Aylmer Maude's death. Their work was thought to be of high quality in their lifetime, and this opinion still has wide support. Tolstoy believed that "Better translators, both for knowledge of the two languages and for penetration into the very meaning of the matter translated, could not be invented."
Read more about this topic: Aylmer And Louise Maude
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