The life of Edith Pargeter (alias Ellis Peters): Murder-mystery novelist and self-taught Czech translator
Edith Pargeter was a writer who achieved fame in Britain for her historical murder mysteries. What is less well known is her career as a (self-taught) translator and promoter of Czech literature.
October 14th marks twenty-nine years since the death of Edith Mary Pargeter, the popular and prolific English novelist, who, under the pen-name of Ellis Peters, created the character of the crime-solving monk Brother Cadfael. The Cadfael Chronicles were later turned into a television series, with Sir Derek Jacobi starring in the main role of the brilliant Benedictine.
Yet Pargeter’s success in later life may obscure her other talents and her earlier work as a respected translator of Czech literature. She translated such works as Bohumil Hrabal’s Closely Watched Trains and Jan Neruda’s Tales from the Little Quarter. She had no Czech ancestry or childhood connection to Czechoslovakia; it was a series of historical accidents in her adult life that ignited a love for the country that lasted until her dying day. I spoke to Suzanne Bray, professor of British Literature and Civilisation at Lille Catholic University, about the Czechoslovak side to this remarkable writer.
Edith Pargeter is born in the English county of Shropshire. Growing up in England with these origins, her deep affection throughout her life for Czechoslovakia is a bit of a surprise. Where does the connection to Czechoslovakia begin for her?
“Well, we don't actually know completely, but the first traces we have of her interest is in the period leading up to the Second World War, with all the situation in Czechoslovakia, with Hitler trying to invade the Sudetenland, and her feeling that the Western powers were neglecting some of the little countries, particularly Czechoslovakia. So she felt that this was an injustice. She was very upset about the Munich Agreement.
“And then during the war itself, she met Czech military personnel. Some people think that she may have had a romantic relationship with one of them, but we have absolutely no proof, one way or the other, about this. But it is certain that she, from the run-up to the Second World War onwards, had sympathy for Czechoslovakia, and that the Czech people she met during the war, she was very impressed with them. She liked their sense of humour, and she got on with them. She became increasingly interested in Czechoslovakia as a result of this.”
So the connections then to Czechoslovakia is sort of twofold. We have her personal principles, and then we have her personal connections to Czechoslovaks in the UK during the war. When then was she first able to visit the country? And what were her impressions of Czechoslovakia?
“This was through the Workers' Education Association. She went with a group. The idea was to encourage and help relationships between Czech workers and left-wing Labour-voting British people. She went with this group and immediately fell in love with the country, got to know some people who would become lifelong friends. She absolutely loved it all.
“In particular, she met Jiří Edelmann and he became one of her closest friends, very much someone that she would consider part of her family for the rest of her life. So she was absolutely knocked out by Czechoslovakia and by the Czech people and by certain Czech people in particular. There’s a fictionalised account of her first trip to Czechoslovakia in the novel The Fair Young Phoenix, which is apparently very close to what she experienced.”
And could you tell us about some of the people that she was meeting in the literary scene? It’s during those trips that she did get to meet some quite famous names in Czech literature.
“She did, but not till later. This is a distinctly later development, when she was able to meet authors because the first person involved in the literary scene who she meets is actually back in England. It's John Beer, who's working for her publisher Heinemann. He’s largely one of the people who gets her involved with the literary scene.
“It's only really when the Czech Union of Writers react to her first translation, which she does of Jan Neruda's Tales of the Little Quarter, that she actually gets in touch with the literary scene in Prague. Zora Wolfová is her closest literary friend in Czechoslovakia. Bohumil Hrabal she also gets to know quite well, and he's going to be a big figure in the Prague Spring later on. She also meets some English people involved in the Czech literary scene, in particular, George Theiner, the English editor of the journal Artia. It's through them that she will get to know other Czech writers as well.”
And could you tell me about her acquisition of the Czech language. It has quite a fearsome reputation. And I think it's safe to say that she mastered this language. So could you tell us about how she achieved that, working with and learning the language at a distance from Czechoslovakia?
“She did not really master the oral language. She mastered the written language. And again, she mastered it in comprehension, not in expression. She used typical ‘Learn Czech’ stuff. She used grammar books. She used manuals. She used everything that she could find. But her knowledge of the Czech language was very much, as I said, about comprehension. According to her friends in Prague, she never spoke Czech fluently. She could have a conversation, but she never spoke the language fluently.
“And she could not possibly have translated into Czech. She could translate very competently from Czech to English, but from English to Czech would not have been possible. She was entirely self-motivated, and she was self-taught. When there were bits in her translations, things she did not understand in the books that she was translating, she just contacted her Czech friends and got them to explain it to her.
“So no, she never really mastered it completely. What she says is she used a somewhat old-fashioned set of books and teach-yourself records and just taught herself at home. She could not really practice, you know, living where she did. There were not many Czech speakers about. She never really got to speak it, because all her Czech friends spoke English.”
And her translations of Czech books, what were their impact? Did they help to popularize and raise awareness of literature behind the Iron Curtain?
“Yes, they definitively did. They were not excessively successful, but they were moderately so. They did draw attention to Czech literature. They made it possible for English-speaking people to have access to some of the classics of the Czech language. Her translations were good translations, on the grounds that she was a very good writer, in English. She brought out very attractive and very readable versions of these well-known Czech works.
“They were successful in her aim of drawing attention to Czech literature in the English-speaking world. She also did radio programmes and interviews to publicise her books, which again drew attention to the existence of a literary culture in Czechoslovakia. It was a mixture that she translated, a mixture of classic works and more recent, often rather more controversial Czech works. Sometimes her Czech friends were not quite sure why she bothered to translate those ones. She also wrote two novels, English novels, which were based in Czechoslovakia.”
In her later life, she finds fame under the pen-name of Ellis Peters, in particular for her series of books about the crime-solving monk Brother Cadfael. When she is living in Shrewsbury during these years, does she keep up her Czechoslovak enthusiasm? What is the role of Czechoslovakia in the later stage of her life?
“After the clampdown, after the Prague Spring, although she remained in contact with all her Czech friends, they did not play quite such a big role in her literary life. She was still extremely close to her Czech friends and contacts. She rejoiced greatly at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the fall of communism. But from a literary point of view, it was more a case of Zora Wolfová and other people in Czechoslovakia translating the Cadfael Chronicles into Czech! So, it was the over way around. From the beginning of the CC, her literary work is her own and is based in Britain.
“At the end of the Prague Spring, she stopped her translation work, because she had no means of getting them published in Czechoslovakia. She did not see the point of just writing for English speakers.
“She was absolutely delighted with the fall of communism, and she remained in constant contact with all her Czech friends. Edith, Jiří Edelmann's first grandchild, was named after her, and in 1994 when she died, Edelmann was at her bedside. When he heard that she was failing, he came over, and of course was now able to do so. He was with her in her last moments. She was involved in the British-Czechoslovakia Friendship League as well.
“Everybody acknowledged her to have been a great friend of Czechoslovakia.”
Edith Pargeter died at the age of 82 on the 14th of October 1995, in her home in Shropshire. In honour of Prague and the district where her friend Jiří Edelmann lived, that English house where she died had been named Troja.
