Roman days (1887) Author: Viktor Rydberg Translator: Alfred Corning Clark With: Hans Anton Westesson Lindehn Title and contents | Next >>
	Project Runeberg | Catalog | Recent Changes | Donate | Comments? |

Preface to the electronic edition

This collection of translated essays by Viktor Rydberg (1828–1895) first appeared in 1879 and in a 2nd edition in 1887. A copy of the 2nd edition was digitized in August 2010 at the University of Toronto by the Internet Archive, from where the scanned images and OCR text in September 2020 were copied to Project Runeberg for proofreading.

The translator Alfred Corning Clark (1844–1896) was an American philantropist, who in 1869 started to make summer visits to Norway, after having met Norwegian tenor Lorentz Severin Skougaard (1837–1885, L.S.S. in the dedication) in Paris some years earlier. As far as we know, this is the only literary work he published. How could he in ten years time master Norwegian and also Swedish to the level where he dared to publish a translation? Perhaps he had an extraordinary teacher in the author of the introductory biographical sketch of Rydberg, Dr. Hans Anton Westesson Lindehn? Lindehn (1826–1884; H.A.W.L. in the dedication) was born in Sweden and had in 1851 and 1853 written and defended two doctoral dissertations, one on chemistry and one on an Arabic chronicle. He was a master chessplayer and in 1874 emigrated to the United States, where he was a correspondent for Swedish newspapers. If anybody could encourage a rich American not only to study Scandinavian languages, but also to discover the essays of Viktor Rydberg, and translate them for publication, that should be Lindehn.

This volume was scanned elsewhere and made available by the Internet Archive, from where the scanned images were copied to Project Runeberg. We very much appreciate that they have made this possible and want to encourage other digital library projects to follow their example. Read more about Project Runeberg's image sources.

Table of Contents