The Earliest Dutch-Language Translations of Poe’s Tales, 1845–1900

Abstract:Whereas Poe’s influence on many national literatures has been the subject of serious scholarly investigation, no attention has been paid to the nineteenth-century Dutch-language imitations, adaptations, and translations of his tales in the Netherlands and Flanders. Based on unexplored evidence in contemporary journals and newspapers, this contribution fills this gap by examining the earliest of such translations, published in the first seventeen years after the author’s death. The appendix provides the first-ever catalog of recoverable translations and adaptations of Poe’s tales until 1900. While even before 1860 Poe’s name featured in literary surveys, reference works, and newspaper items, Dutch-language versions of his tales throughout the nineteenth century appeared only sporadically. For various sociolinguistic, political, and educational reasons, the versions published in the Netherlands antedated and outnumbered those produced in Flanders. Usually offered to the reading public in condensed form, the earliest translations and adaptations were derived from both intermediate source texts—French, German, and British—and from original Poe editions. Plans for the publication of selections of Poe’s prose works in the 1850s and 1860s foundered; not until the late nineteenth century were Dutch-language audiences given access to more than a sprinkling of Poe’s tales.