Isabel Florence Hapgood

Isabel Florence Hapgood (November 21, 1851 – June 26, 1928) was an American ecumenist, writer and translator of Russian and French texts.

Early Life

Hapgood was born in Boston, to Asa Hapgood and Lydia Anna Bronson Crossley, with her twin brother Asa. They later had a younger son, William Frank Hapgood. Asa Hapgood was an inventor and his family of English and Scottish descent had lived near Worcester, Massachusetts since the 17th century. Her mother's father had emigrated from England and owned a farm in Mason County, Kentucky. While Asa was sent to Harvard University, which did not accept women (and ultimately went into the paper business), Isabel attended Worcester's Collegiate Institute between 1863 and 1865, then transferred to Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. She graduated in 1868, the year her father died. Hapgood showed considerable language abilities, mastering many Romance and Germanic as well as Slavic languages, including Russian, Polish and Church Slavonic.

Career

Hapgood became a major translator of French and Russian literature, as well as a key figure in the dialogue between Western Christianity and Orthodoxy. She helped Harvard professor Francis James Child with his Book of Ballads which began publication in 1882. In 1886 Hapgood published her own Epic Songs of Russia, for which Child supplied a preface. Hapgood also published translations of Leo Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, Youth and Nikolay Gogol’s Taras Bulba and Dead Souls. The following year her translations of the major works of Victor Hugo began publication, introducing that major French author to American audiences.

Hapgood dreamed of traveling to Russia, and so engaged a Russian lady to help her attain fluency in the spoken language. Between 1887 and 1889, she and her widowed mother traveled through Russia. While there, Hapgood met several significant Russian literary and clerical figures. After that trip, Hapgood began traveled annually to Russia.

Hapgood spent several weeks with the famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy on his country estate, and continued publishing translations of his works. In 1891, The Atlantic magazine published Hapgood's lengthy article detailing her observations of Tolstoy as a man trying to live his ideal life.

For 22 years, Hapgood wrote for the New York Evening Post and the Nation. In 1893 Hapgood reviewed a book by Kate Marsden which described her journey across Russia to find a cure for leprosy. The Royal Geographical Society lauded Marsden, but Hapgood discounted her efforts. One scholar later speculated that Hapgood was jealous of Marsden writing about "her" country or because of homophobic rumours about Marsden.

Hapgood also was impressed by the Russian Orthodox liturgy and choral singing, and wanted to translate them for American audiences. Nicholas, Archbishop of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands supported her efforts and gave her a complete set of Church Slavonic texts. Then Archbishop Tikhon became her friend and gave her practical advice. The first edition appeared in 1906. She was visiting Tikhon, who had become Patriarch of Moscow and editing a second edition of the work during her trip to Moscow in 1916-1917. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, Hapgood escaped with the assistance of the American Consul and returned to the United States. Because Patriarch Tikhon was under house arrest, the second edition was not published in 1922, but it did contain Tikhon's endorsement dated November 3, 1921. For those eleven years of work, Hapgood accepted a $500 honorarium.

Despite Count Tolstoy's admonition that she should marry, Ms. Hapgood never married and had no children.

Veneration

Isabel Hapgood died in New York City on June 26, 1928, and her remains were taken to and buried in the familial plot in Worcester, Massachusetts. The liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) remembers the distinguished translator and ecumenist annually with a feast day on June 26.

Own works

• The Epic Songs of Russia (1886) (new edition with an introduction by Prof J.W.Macktail, 1915))
• Count Tolstoi and the Public Censor, 1887
• Notable Women: Sonya Kovalevsky, as it appeared in Century Magazine (1895).
• Russian Rambles (1895)
• A Survey of Russian Literature (1902)
• Little Russian and St. Petersburg Tales (Date Unknown)
• 'The Death and Funeral of St. Raphael', New York Tribune, March 8, 1915

Translations

• Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1888), and Sevastopol (1888) by Leo Tolstoy
• The Kreutzer Sonata(1890) by Leo Tolstoy
• On Labor and Luxury, On the Significance of Science and Art, Article on the Census in Moscow, Thoughts Evoked by the Census of Moscow and What to Do? by Leo Tolstoy
• Dead Souls, Old-Fashioned Farmers, St. John's Eve, Taras Bulba, The Cloak, The Portrait, and The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovitch Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovitch by Nikolai Gogol
• Les Misérables (1887), Notre Dame de Paris (1888), and Toilers of the Sea (1888) by Victor Hugo
• Recollections and Letters (1892) by Ernest Renan
• The Revolution of France Under the Third Republic (1897) by Pierre de Coubertin
• Foma Gordyeef (1901) and Orloff and His Wife (1901) by Maksim Gorky
• The Brothers Karamazov (1905) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Seagull (1905) by Anton Chekhov
• The Gospel in Brief (2008, new edition 2010) by Leo Tolstoy
• Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic (Greco-Russian) Church (1906) (republished 1922)
• The Village (1923) by Ivan Bunin
• Cuore (Heart): An Italian Schoolboy's Journal by Edmondo De Amicis
• The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories, A Reckless Character, and Other Stories and A Nobleman's Nest by Ivan Turgenev

External links

• Works by Isabel Florence Hapgood at Project Gutenberg
• Template:Worldcat id
• Orthodoxwiki: Isabel Hapgood
• Isabel Hapgood - by Fr. Alexey Young (a brief biography)
• A Linguistic Bridge to Orthodoxy: In Memoriam Isabel Florence Hapgood - by Marina Ledkovsky. A lecture delivered at the Twelfth Annual Russian Orthodox Musicians Conference, October 7–11, 1998, Washington, D.C. (PDF)