Robert Nisbet Bain (1854–1909) was a British historian and linguist who worked for the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Life

Bain was born in London in 1854 to David and Elizabeth (born Cowan) Bain. Bain was a fluent linguist who could use over twenty languages. Besides translating a number of books he also used his skills to write learned books on foreign people and folklore. Bain was a frequent contributor to the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...

''. His contributions were biographies and varied from Andrew Aagensen to

Aleksander Wielopolski Margrave ( pl, margrabia) Aleksander Ignacy Jan-Kanty Wielopolski (born 1803 in Sędziejowice, Kraków Department, Duchy of Warsaw, died 1877 in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony, German Empire) was a Polish aristocrat, owner of large estates, and the ...

. He taught himself Hungarian in order that he could read

Mór Jókai Móric Jókay de Ásva (, known as ''Mór Jókai''; 18 February 1825 – 5 May 1904), outside Hungary also known as Maurus Jokai or Mauritius Jókai, was a Hungarian nobleman, novelist, dramatist and revolutionary. He was an active participant ...

in the original after first reading him in German. He translated from Finnish, Danish and Russian and also tackled Turkish authors via Hungarian. He was the most prolific translator into English from Hungarian in the nineteenth century. He married late and died young after publishing a wide range of literature from or about Europe. He is buried in

Brookwood Cemetery Brookwood Cemetery, also known as the London Necropolis, is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Europe. The cemetery is listed a Grade I site in the Regist ...

Works

* ''Gustavus III. and his contemporaries 1746-1792.'' 2 Bände. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894. * ''The daughter of Peter the Great. A history of Russian diplomacy.'' Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1899 * ''Peter III. Emperor of Russian. The story of a crisis and a crime.'' London: Archibald Constable, 1902. *'' Biography of Leo Tolstoy'', 1903. * ''Scandinavia. A political history of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900.'' Cambridge: University Press, 1905 * ''The First Romanovs. A History of Moscovite Civilisation and the Rise of Modern Russia Under Peter the Great and His Forerunners''. 1905. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1967. * Slavonic Europe: ''A Political History of Poland and Russia from 1447 to 1796'', Cambridge University Press, 1908. * ''The last King of Poland and his contemporaries.'' London: Methuen, 1909 * ''Charles XII and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire 1682-1719'', NA Kessinger Pub. Co. 2006, .

Translations

* ''Russian Fairy Tales'', 1892 * ''Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales'', London : Lawrence and Bullen 1894 * ''Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales'', 1896 * ''Tales from Tolstoi'', 1901 * ''Tales from Gorky'', 1902 Translations *

: **''Egy Magyar Nábob,'' 1850; engl. ''A Hungarian Nabob'', New York : DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1899 ** ''The Day of Wrath'' ** ''The Poor Plutocrats'' * Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie: ** ''Weird Tales from Northern Seas''

Bibliography

* Elias Bredsdorff: ''Danish Literature in English Translation;'' in: ''Orbis Litterarum'' 5 (1) 1947, S. 187–257. * L. C. Wharton: ''Transcription of Foreign Tongues;'' in: ''Transactions of the Philological Society'' 29 (1), S. 59–112 * Roxoliana Zorivchak: ''The First English Translations of Ukrainian Fairy Tales;'' in: ''Forum'' 62 (Summer 1985): S. 9–11.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bain, Robert Nisbet 1854 births 1909 deaths Linguists from the United Kingdom Employees of the British Museum 19th-century British translators Burials at Brookwood Cemetery Hungarian–English translators