Robert André Edouard Baldick, FRSL (9 November 1927 – April 1972),[1] was a British scholar of French literature, writer, translator and joint editor of the Penguin Classics series with Betty Radice. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

He wrote eight books including biographies of Joris-Karl Huysmans, Frédérick Lemaître and Henry Murger and a history of the Siege of Paris. In addition he edited and translated The Goncourt Journals and other classics of French literature including works by Gustave Flaubert, Chateaubriand, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jules Verne, and Henri Barbusse, as well as a number of novels by Georges Simenon.

His sons are Julian Baldick, an author specialising in Sufism, and English academic Chris Baldick.

Selected bibliography

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  • The Life of Joris Karl Huysmans. (Oxford University Press, 1955; new edition revised by Brendan King, Dedalus Books 2006)
  • Dinner at Magny's (Victor Gollancz, 1971) [2]
  • The Life and Times of Frédérick Lemaître: Actor, Lover and Idol of Paris (Hamish Hamilton, 1959)
  • Against Nature (Penguin Classics) by Joris-Karl Huysmans (translator; Penguin, 1959)
  • The Goncourts (Bowes and Bowes, 1960)
  • The First Bohemian: The Life of Henry Murger (Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
  • The Memoirs of Chateaubriand (editor & translator; Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
  • Three Tales (Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert (translator; Penguin, 1961)
  • Pages from the Goncourt Journal (editor & translator; Oxford University Press, 1962 & The Folio Society, 1980)
  • Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries (translator; Jonathan Cape, 1962)
  • Cruel Tales (Oxford Library of French Classics) by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (translator; Oxford University Press, 1963)
  • The Battle of Dienbienphu by Jules Roy (translator; Harper Row, 1963)
  • The Siege of Paris (Batsford, 1964)
  • Sentimental Education (Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert (translator; Penguin, 1964)
  • The Duel: A History of Duelling (Chapman and Hall, 1965)
  • Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jean-Paul Sartre (translator; Penguin, 1965)
  • Hell by Henri Barbusse (translator; Chapman & Hall, 1966)
  • The Trial of Marshal Pétain by Jules Roy (translator; Faber, 1968)
  • Around the Moon by Jules Verne (translator; J. M. Dent & Sons, 1970)
  • Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890s by Philippe Jullian (translator; Pall Mall Press, 1971)
  • Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs (translator; Panther, 1972)[3]

See also

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ O'Driscoll, Kieran (2011), Retranslation Through the Centuries: Jules Verne in English, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 151–152
  2. ^ Biographical detail taken from a copy Dinner at Magny's, published by Gollancz in 1971
  3. ^ London: Panther. ISBN 0-586-03517-6.