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Constance Clara Garnett was born on December 19, 1861, in Brighton, England (UK). She was a remarkable english translator of Russian literature.
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Her childhood had not been a happy one. She suffered from tuberculosis until the age of seven.
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In 1879, when advanced education for women was unusual, she won a scholarship to Newnham College Association for advanced Learning and Education among Women in Cambridge.
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In 1883 she moved to London, where she started to work as a governess, and then as the librarian at the People's Palace Library.
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In 1889, she married Edward Garnett, a writer and literary critic.
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In the summer of 1891 she got pregnant and she started to study Russian.
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Constance Garnett picked up a dictionary and set out to bring the Russian masters to life in her native tongue.
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In 1892, she began her career as a translator with Ivan Goncharov’s Obyknovennaya istoriya.
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In the winter of 1894 Garnett traveled alone in Russia for three months.
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By the late 1920s, Garnett was frail and half-blind. She retired from translating after the publication in 1934 of Three Plays by Turgenev.
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She developed a heart condition, with attendant breathlessness, and in her last years had to walk with crutches. She died at The Cearne, Crockham Hill, on December 17 in 1946 at the age of 84.
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While some of her translations now seem dated, they were considered as an influence on English literature during the first half of the 20th century.
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Her translations of Turgenev were highly regarded by Rachel May, in her study on translating Russian classics.
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It was Garnett’s translations that made their way to college campuses throughout the English-speaking world, and introduced readers to the characters they know today.
