| Henry Frith | |
| Birth Date: | 2 May 1840 |
| Birth Place: | Dublin, Ireland |
| Death Place: | Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England |
| Nationality: | Irish |
| Years Active: | 1875–1913 |
| Notable Works: | Translations of Jules Verne |
Henry Frith (2 May 184012 October 1917) was an Irish engineer who translated the works of Jules Verne and others, as well as writing his own works. His prolific output amounted to nearly 200 works between translations, novels, and instructional titles.[1]
Frith was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 2 May 1840, at 2, Upper Leeson Street.[2] He was the second son of Henry Frith and Frances (née Winter). Of his four siblings[3] [4] [5] [6] only two, his eldest and youngest brothers survived to adulthood. His father worked in the Ordnance Office in Dublin.[7] Frith was educated at Cheltenham College and entered Trinity College Dublin on 1 July 1857 to train as a Civil Engineer. Applying for a Civil Service post, he was appointed to the War Office in London, where he remained until 1875 when he retired with a pension and began his literary efforts.
Frith married Mary Lowndes (April 18447 June 1928) on 25 May 1869 in Hove, Sussex, England. Mary was the third daughter of William Lowndes (1807–1864) and Marth Sutton (1807–1890). The Lowndes were wealthy, being the ground landlords for Knightsbridge in London.[8] When Mary's step-brother William Lowndes (1834–1905) died, his estate was valued at £452,310. He not only left £7,000 to each of his three half sisters, but also left his real estate (the Knightsbridge ground rents, and the Bury house) together with the residue of his personal estate to her eldest son William Frederick.[9]
The couple had six children:
Frith originally trained as an engineer,[12] and worked for the War Office until 1875 when he qualified for a pension. The way in which he described himself changed over time:
Frith's work, with nearly 200 books to his credit, consists of:
He also produced some albums and books that don't fit easily into these four categories. Frith freely makes the work of others in his non-fiction works, and some of them were encyclopedic in tone, briefly covering a wide range of issues in a topic. In his preface to Ascents and Adventures: A Record of Hardy Mountaineering in Every Quarter of the Globe, he says: "The following pages do not profess to be a record of our own personal adventures. They include many experiences of a varied character in Europe, Asia, and America; but while making use of the narratives and notes of more experienced climbers, without copying their work; we have in some cases embodied the spirit of it, and fixed it in our pages for the amusement, and it may be for the instruction, of young people."[13]
The first of Frith's works that is catalogued at the British Library is an 1875 translation of Les Braves Gens by Jules Girardin. This was translated as The Adventures of Johnny Ironsides in English. Frith followed this in 1976 with a translation of two of Jules Verne's stories in the following year: Une Ville flottante and Les Forceurs de blocus as A Floating City and the Blockade Runners.
Frith translated another five workes by Verne:[14]
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction suggests that Frith may have translated Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon, but neither Wolcott nor Evans include it on their lists.
Wolcott rated Frith's translation of Vingt mille lieues sur les mers as a translation of particular merit and said of him: "With his scientific background he understood much of what Verne had written, and this translation has remained one of the best of the time with only minor deletions from the original text."
Frith also translated other works by:
Most of Frith's novels fall into the boys' adventure category. As with the lists in the following sections, the list of titles is not meant to be comprehensive, but to give the reader a flavour of the range of Frith's output:
The entertaining non-fiction was mostly aimed at a juvenile audience. The titles included:
Frith's instructional non-fiction has been quite long-lived, with new editions, sometimes revised, long after his death. The titles include:
Frith died, aged 78, on 12 October 1917. He was still living at Shenstone House, Amersham Common.[15] He was survived by his wife Mary, who administered his estate of £2,335 4s 10d. The Buckinghamshire Examiner expressed sympathy with his son, William Frederick. Mary survived Frith by another 11 years, dying on 7 June 1928.