‘A Plain and Unassuming Style’: Thomasina Ross and Humboldt’s Travels (1852–1853)

Abstract

A comparison of Williams’s and Ross’s respective translations forms the central focus of this chapter. Ross’s abridged and modernised translation which appeared in three volumes (1852-53) in Henry Bohn’s Scientific Library series successfully eclipsed the badly received (and by then largely forgotten) Longman edition. Its relative brevity, greater linearity and far lower price made it more accessible to general readers. Yet Humboldt scholars have ignored it precisely because it is not considered as comprehensive or authoritative. While this chapter acknowledges the palimpsestic qualities of Ross’s version, which carries glimpses of Williams’s translation beneath the surface, it argues that Ross’s edition recast Humboldt, and Humboldtian writing, in new and striking ways. Ross omitted his repeated emphases on processes, rather than merely results, and on failure as key to experimentation. Above all her erasure of his emphasis on intellectual sociability was responsible for cultivating the lingering misperception of the Prussian as a lone genius.