PIERRE STEPHEN ROBERT PAYNE (1911-1983) was an extraordinarily prolific writer, historian, biographer and translator. He was a professor of English poetry and lecturer in naval architecture, a war correspondent in Spain, a Times of London correspondent in China (1942), the founding director of Columbia University Translation Center, and the author of over 110 books on a wide variety of subjects. He translated from Chinese, Danish, French, Greek, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish, and Russian. His first translation (pseudonymously as Anthony Wolfe) was Yuri Olesha’s Envy, in 1936. Also in 1936, he became the first person to translate Pasternak’s short stories into English. The result was first published in Singapore in 1941 as Childhood. Payne turned out an average of two books a year, many of them massive studies.
The Childhood of Lyuvers
Chtenia: Winter 2010
Author: Boris Pasternak
Translator: Robert Payne
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