Lady Charlotte Guest
Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (nee Bertie, born May 19, 1812 in Uffington, Lincolnshire, † January 15, 1895 ) was a British translator, educator and entrepreneur. Your translation of the Mabinogion into English made known to the medieval Welsh tales to a wider audience. This made attentive, researchers soon realized the opportunity to see the original stories, the origins of the Welsh language and literature. Of scientific interest are the stories but also because they provide clues to the development of the Arthurian legend. Thus, in the Three Romances, the Charlotte Guest translated together with the four branches of the Mabinogi and published, the same events as in the works of Chrétien de Troyes described, although they are older.
Life
Childhood and youth
Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie was born in 1812 the eldest child of Albemarle Bertie, the ninth Earl of Lindsey, and his second wife Charlotte Susanna Elizabeth Layard in Uffington in Lincolnshire. 1814 Albemarle George Augustus Frederick, who became the 10th Earl of Lindsey, in the world, a year later, followed by Montague Peregrin.
1818 her father died and her mother married in 1821 Rev. William Peter Pegu, from which it a year later a daughter, Marie Antoinetta got. Charlotte liked her stepfather, not least was due to his belief that girls should not be formed. Charlotte was intellectually gifted and taught himself French and Italian at. With the help of the teacher of her brothers, she learned Arabic, Hebrew and Persian and started next to oriental tales and archeology are also interested in medieval history and legends.
1833-1852: marriage to John Josiah Guest
When Charlotte moved to London with twenty-one years, they met, after a brief flirtation with the later Prime Minister of Britain, Benjamin Disraeli, the businessman John Josiah Guest. He had made his fortune as a partner in the Dowlais Iron Company in Merthyr Tydfil, which became the largest iron and steel producers in the world. As a member of Parliament, he had traveled to London. Despite the age and class differences, the two were married in July 1833 and moved to Wales.
Charlotte began very in her husband's business, but also to get involved outside of it. In addition to a general interest in the iron and steel making, she made translations of technical documents into French and fought for the employees. Particular interest in her was the formation of factory workers. They modernized schools and visited them regularly to determine whether new learning methods that they had proposed were also applied. Teachers were sent for training to London in order to teach better later. Charlotte Guest ensured that famous scientists visited their schools and gave lectures there. So got the " Guest Schools " the reputation of being the most modern and advanced schools of the time, in which children were taught to fourteen years. The Guests also sat down heavily and for the training of adults.
In order to support her husband's political career, but also from interest, they learned Welsh and began sporadically to translate ancient Welsh poems. Together with Lady Llanover founded the Guests the Society of Welsh Scholars of Abergavenny, which advocated the preservation of the Welsh language and traditions.
1834 gave birth to Lady Charlotte Guest Marie, the first of ten children. Ivor Bertie, the second child was born in 1835, the first Baron Wimborne was. He was uncle of Winston Churchill by his marriage with Lady Cornelia Henrietta Maria Spencer-Churchill.
1838 was John J. Guest conferred the title of baronet and Charlotte Guest published the first edition of the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh tales.
1845 discovered her future son Austen Henry Layard, the 1869 Mary Enid Evelyn Guest, the eighth child of the family married, the ruins of Nineveh. Charlotte Guest secured from the excavation site as many artifacts that could add to Canford Manor, the family bought a 1846 Nineveh porch. Later, the pieces went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
Because her husband went from bad to worse health, Charlotte took over the course of time more and more tasks in the management of the Dowlais Iron Company. After the death of John Guest in 1852, she led the company very successful and led it through a period marked by stagnant sales, factory closures and strikes.
They fought for their workers, for example, for those who did not work on Sundays or the young women and girls who were set to night cheap stack iron. Charlotte Guest also supported the local economy in order to prevent further emigration to Australia.
Only in this busy time she broke her habit of writing diary that she had kept since she was nine years until 1855, the management of the company George Thomas Clark wore when she married Charles Schreiber, the tutor of her son Ivor.
1855-1884: marriage to Charles Schreiber
Schreiber was a scholar from Cambridge and Member of Parliament for Cheltenham and later for Poole. Charlotte's life was changed by marriage, as they now more frequented literary and artistic stakeholders and personalities such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Lord Alfred Tennyson met. Together with her husband she traveled to Europe and the Middle East to collect ceramics, fans, board games and playing cards.
When Charles died in 1884 during a trip to Portugal, Charlotte returned to England, where they cataloged their collection of ceramics and made available to the public by being the Victoria and Albert Museum donated. In the following years Charlotte completed her collection of fans, which was the subject of a 1887 essay. 1888 and 1892 they published books on English and European fans when she bequeathed her collection to the British Museum.
Until her death in 1895 she was committed to Turkish refugees and the London cab drivers.
The translation of the Mabinogion
In addition to learning the Welsh Charlotte Guest also made acquaintance with Thomas Price, a Welsh bard, Théodore Claude Henri, a French philologist and Gwallter Mechain who supported them all in their translation work. After they had some medieval songs and poems translated into English, she ventured to the translation of the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh tales whose origin is to reach into the past. In addition to the four branches of the Mabinogi translated and Charlotte Guest also released seven more stories that are "clean " in Welsh on the one hand ( Breuddwyd Macsen, Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys, Culhwch and Olwen and Breuddwyd Rhonabwy ), on the other hand, thematically related to the Arthurian legend ( Iarlles y Ffynnawn, Peredur fab Efrawg and Gereint fab heiress ). All these stories are to be found in the manuscripts Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch and Llyfr Coch Hergest.
The name Mabinogion is a creation of Charlotte Guest, which met in the manuscripts the word mabynogyon and held it mistaken for the plural form of mabinogi (such as " son " or " boy ").
The tales of the Mabinogion William Owen Pughe had in his work Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, a collection of verses and stories created 1801-1807, summarized, but his translation was not published until his death in 1835, so that Charlotte Guests work known as the first been. Your translation was more than 90 years, the standard work, which speaks for the high quality of their work.
After the first publication in 1838 in Llandovery followed until 1849, further editions, which focused, for example, the stories associated with the Arthurian legend or the " romances " were. Although the interest in Celtic culture had experienced a boom since the release of the songs of Ossian and the stories of the Mabinogion have always been widely used in the oral tradition in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, they gave the scholars received little attention, which by itself changed the publication of the translations. In the edition of 1877 Charlotte Guest remarked that her translation of Geraint ac Enid foundation for Alfred Tennyson's poems about Gereint in Idylls of the King was. This shows that they had their goal to spread medieval literature from Wales achieved.