Corinne from the French by Isabel Hill

This entry focuses on Isabel Hill’s 1833 translation into English of Germaine de Staël’s novel Corinne: ou l’Italie (1807), a European bestseller which scrutinizes the society of Napoleonic Europe. Hill’s translation, which was the most widely available in Britain throughout the nineteenth century and remained in print until the 1880s, is of particular significance as it was also accompanied by the translator’s note, a biography of Staël (also by Hill), and the first metrical translations of three of Corinne’s odes by English poet and novelist Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38). It was thanks to these metrical translations into English that Hill’s edition became popular. Because of its focus on cross-channel cultural exchanges, its several references to linguistic diversity and national identity, and its characters’ connections to the grand events of recent European politics and history, it emerges that Hill’s translation provides a comprehensive map of the dynamic cross-channel cultural developments that helped form Staël’s reputation.