F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada: Translated Lives by Klaus Martens (review)

humanities 507 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 community figurehead whom everybody adored. This Montgomery stands in stark contrast with the person found in her Selected Journals (four volumes to date, 1985, 1987, 1992, and 1998), who, in addition to enjoying many of the facets of her public life, could often be impatient, angry, bored, and even malicious towards the same communities of people to which this book gives a voice: in her own words in the journal, she was sometimes even snappish and sarcastic to irritating people. Since several interviewees mention feeling upset after reading the Selected Journals because >that=s not the Lucy Maud I knew,= perhaps Heilbron could have pushed this issue further by discussing the journals with the interviewees in more detail. Heilbron=s sparse introduction is surprisingly brief for someone who has worked so much with Montgomery material: it would have been helpful, particularly for the many readers who have had no access to the journals or other biographical material, to expand on the discrepancy between popular memory and Montgomery=s own life record by providing concrete examples and quotations to summarize Montgomery=s conflicting role as minister=s wife (for instance, were his parishioners really unaware of her husband=s mental illness, which Montgomery worked hard to conceal?). Given that Montgomery was such a complex person, as Heilbron notes in her introduction, it would be worthwhile to see a more rigorous discussion and analysis of some of these complexities in order to contextualize more fully what is otherwise a worthwhile volume. (BENJAMIN LEFEBVRE AND MARY HENLEY RUBIO) Klaus Martens. F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada: Translated Lives. Translated by Paul Morris University of Alberta Press. xxxii, 352. $34.95 In F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada: Translated Lives, Klaus Martens has at least two objectives. One is to offer a scholarly account of Felix Paul Greve=s life as a translator, author, and dramatist in Germany prior to his faked 1909 suicide, his arrival in Canada in 1912, and his subsequent career as a writer in this country. (Despite its title, Martens=s study focuses largely on Greve=s European years.) F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada thus seeks to offer a more detailed and authoritative account of Greve=s life in Germany than that provided by D.O. Spettigue=s ground-breaking but outdated FPG: The European Years. And he succeeds. Martens=s other objective is to document the role translators play in the mediation of culture. Greve played an invaluable role in the introduction of Oscar Wilde, H.G.Wells, Gustave Flaubert, André Gide, and many others to German readers. >There can be little doubt,= Martens argues at one point, >that André Gide owed much of his early international reputation to Felix Paul Greve=s efforts, and both knew it.= 508 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Martens=s study needs to be considered under at least three headings: as a translation, as a scholarly biography, and as a good, old-fashioned mystery. It exists, in the first instance, as a translation. F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada is a translation of Martens=s Felix Paul Greves Karriere: Frederick Philip Grove in Deutschland, published by Röhrig Universitätsverlag in 1997. The book has been translated by Paul Morris in collaboration with Martens. Given that Martens heads a research group at the Universität des Saarlandes B Morris is part of that group B concerned with, among other things, the mediation of culture via translation; and that Martens=s book takes as its subject the importance of translation to the mediation of culture, this translation seems particularly fitting: a book about a translator and the mediation of culture via translation arrives in Canada B like Greve himself B in translation. F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada is more than a translation, however, because Martens and Morris update the study even as they translate it. Felix Paul Greves Karriere, their texte de départ, was grounded in archival research B some of it ongoing; some of it already published in Germany and in Canada...