Edith Grossman

Edith Marion Grossman (née Dorph; March 22, 1936 – September 4, 2023) was an American literary translator. Known for her work translating Latin American and Spanish literature to English, she translated the works of Nobel laureates Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, Álvaro Mutis, and Miguel de Cervantes. She was a recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.

Biography Born Edith Marion Dorph in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Grossman lived in New York City later in life. She received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. from New York University with a thesis on the Chilean "anti-poet" Nicanor Parra. She taught at NYU and Columbia University early in her career. Grossman subsequently changed the focus of her work from scholarship and criticism to translation and, in 1990, left teaching to dedicate her energies full-time to translating.

Grossman was known to her friends as "Edie".

Grossman was notable for advocating that her name appear on the covers of the books she translated, alongside the author. Translators had traditionally been uncredited, which Grossman facetiously said implied that "a magic wand" had been waved to change the language of the text.

Awards and recognition Grossman's translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, published in 2003, is considered one of the finest English-language translations of the Spanish novel by some authors and critics, including Carlos Fuentes and Harold Bloom, who called her "the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note." However, some Cervantes scholars have been more critical of her translation. Tom Lathrop, himself a translator of Don Quixote, critiqued her translation in the journal of the Cervantes Society of America, saying

Both Lathrop and Daniel Eisenberg criticized her for a poor choice of Spanish edition as source, leading to inaccuracies; Eisenberg added that "she is the most textually ignorant of the modern translators".

Grossman received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2006. In 2008, she received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, Grossman was awarded the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize for her 2008 translation of Antonio Muñoz Molina's A Manuscript of Ashes. In 2016, she received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Civil Merit awarded by King Felipe VI of Spain. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her its Thornton Wilder Prize for translation in 2022.

In 1990, Gabriel García Márquez said that he preferred reading his own novels in their English translations by Grossman and Gregory Rabassa. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. . Dream of the Celt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. . The Discreet Hero, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. . The Neighborhood, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. .

Ariel Dorfman: Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance, Penguin, 1988. . In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages, Duke University Press, 2002. .

Mayra Montero: In the Palm of Darkness, HarperCollins, 1997. . The Messenger: A Novel, Harper Perennial, 2000. . The Last Night I Spent With You, HarperCollins, 2000. . The Red of His Shadow, HarperCollins, 2001. . Dancing to "Almendra": A Novel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. . Captain of the Sleepers: A Novel, Picador, 2007. .

Álvaro Mutis: The Adventures of Maqroll: Four Novellas, HarperCollins, 1995. . The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, NYRB Classics, 2002. .

Other translations:

José Luis Llovio-Menéndez, Insider: My Hidden Life as a Revolutionary in Cuba, Bantam Books, 1988. . Augusto Monterroso, Complete Works and Other Stories, University of Texas Press, 1995. . Julián Ríos, Loves That Bind, Knopf, 1998. . Eliseo Alberto, Caracol Beach: A Novel, Vintage, 2001. . Julián Ríos, Monstruary, Knopf, 2001. . Pablo Bachelet, Gustavo Cisneros: The Pioneer, Planeta, 2004. . Carmen Laforet, Nada: A Novel, The Modern Library, 2007. . The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance, W. W. Norton, 2007. . Antonio Muñoz Molina, A Manuscript of Ashes, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. . Luis de Góngora, The Solitudes, Penguin, 2011. . Carlos Rojas, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell, Yale University Press, 2013. . Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Selected Works, W. W. Norton, 2016. . Carlos Rojas, The Valley of the Fallen, Yale University Press, 2018. .

Essay: Why Translation Matters, Yale University Press, 2010. .