Henriette Yvonne Stahl

Henriette Yvonne Stahl (January 9, 1900 – May 25/26, 1984) was a Romanian novelist, short story writer and translator.

Biography Born in Sankt Avold, Alsace-Lorraine, in the German Empire (now Saint-Avold in the Moselle department of France), she was illegitimate until her parents' marriage in February 1901. Her mother was Blanche Boueve; her father Henri Stahl, a professor and minor writer, was the son of a Bavarian naturalized citizen of Romania. Her brother was the sociologist and ethnographer Henri H. Stahl. She took private lessons in lieu of attending high school, following which Stahl studied at the Dramatic Arts Conservatory in Bucharest from 1921 to 1925. Her translations into Romanian were Eugène Sue's Mysteries of Paris; Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1959); John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga (1958-1961, four volumes); Rabindranath Tagore's Gora (1965); Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji (1969) and, in collaboration, several plays by Ivan Turgenev (1958). In 1981, she was awarded the Romanian Writers' Union special prize. By and large, critics did not place Stahl at the forefront of Romanian prose writers. George Călinescu accused her of an "exaggerated feminism", and while recognizing that several characters rang true, believed this insufficient to cover her deficiencies. In Istoria literaturii române, Ion Negoițescu was enthusiastic about two novels, but kept silent about the rest. After the latter fled Communist Romania, she was arrested, interrogated and detained for a year, threatened with a charge of high treason after admitting she knew of his plans.