The Professor in French, part three

It took until 1971 before a new Le Professeur was published, a new translation by Janine Rebersat et Jacques Papy. It was described earlier in the Switzerland article.

The second edition of the Tissier de Mallerais translation was published in 1982, again by Nouvelles Ėditions Latines. The cover is almost the same as the original one from 1946, the amount of pages is the same.

Cover of the 1982 French
The Professor

Nouvelles Ėditions Latines republished it in 1989, with a different cover. They give it as the second edition, rather oddly. It also had 287 pages.

Cover of the 1989 French
The Professor

In its next edition Le Professeur, in the Rebersat and Papy translation, was in one book with Jane Eyre and La Châtelaine de Wildfell Hall. It was published by Robert Laffont from Paris in 1991 (941 pp.).

Cover of the 1991 French
The Professor/Jane Eyre/
Tenant of Wildfell Hall

In 1997 Gallimard published the fourteenth edition of the Loreau translation, in 2001 the fifteenth (both 318 pp.).

Cover of the 1997 French
The Professor

Cover of the 2001 French
The Professor

Loreau’s sixteenth edition was in a book together with translations of Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published by Gallimard in 2002 (1357 pp.).

Cover of the 2002 French
The Professor/Wuthering Heights/
Tenant of Wildfell Hall/Agnes Grey

In 2004 Laffont republished the book in which The Professor was combined with Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (960 pp. this time). It’s the third edition of the Rebersat and Papy translation.

Cover of the 2004 French The Professor/
Jane Eyre/Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(Painting: Frederick-Walker-Jane Eyre
and Rochester (ca. 1863)

A 119 years after its last edition Hachette published a new edition of Loreau’s translation in 2013 (306 pp.). It’s her seventeenth.

Cover of the 2013 French The Professor

The year 2014 saw a facsimile reprint of Loreau’s original work of 1858, published as a print-on-demand book by Reink Books. As well as one by Createspace, from the United States, although it’s unknown which old edition they used.

Cover of the 2014 French Createspace
The Professor

The twentieth edition of the Loreau translation was published in 2015, by Archipoche from Paris (301 pp.), with a preface by Catherine Rihoit. They published two more editions in 2016 (317 pp.). They have the same cover.

Cover of the 2015-6 Archipoche
French The Professors

This year also saw one more facsimile reprint of an old Loreau editions. Reink Books published, as a print-on-demand, the 1867 version. While Createspace had a version of their reprint with a somewhat different cover, the same quite dull one they used for their 2016 Finnish Villette. It doesn’t count as a new edition, being a print-on-demand book. They only count once. Thus we get to 23 editions for Henriette Loreau (equaling the Loisy/Telford French Villette translation). More surely will follow, in the coming years.

Cover of the 2016 French Createspace
The Professor

The other Brontë novels
The first novel to be published was Shirley, in 1850. It was an adapted version – “imité de l’anglais par Old Nick” (P.E. Dauran Forgues). Old Nick later also did an imitation of Jane Eyre, after it had first appeared in 1854 as Jeanne Eyre, ou les Memoires d'une institutrice. The first French Agnes Grey was published in 1859, together with Shirley. Wuthering Heights had to wait until 1892, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall until 1937.

Eric Ruijssenaars