Authors, German -- 19th century -- Biography; May, Karl Friedrich, 1842-1912
http://karlmay.uni-bielefeld.de/kmg/sprachen/englisch/primlit/index.htm
In 1955, a translation of the beginning of Karl May's big oriental
adventure by M.A. de Becker and C.A. Willoughby has been published
under the title "In the Desert". I have neither read this, nor
any other later translations, but I have read about this
translation that it had a tendency to simplify, shorten, and
paraphrase the text. It is also peculiar that someone would only
translate the first volume of a novel in six volumes. Thus, the
reader would witness the hero finding the body of Paul Galingré in
the desert and starting on his pursuit of the killers, but he
would never solve the mystery and discover the criminal mastermind
behind all of it in the end of the last volume. In 1971, two
volumes of short stories entitled "Canada Bill" and "Captain
Cayman", translated by Fred Gardner, have been published in
London. These sold only about 3000 copies each. In 1977, a
series of translations by Michael Shaw was published. It included
"Ardistan and Djinnistan" (2 volumes), "Winnetou" (2 volumes), and
"In the Desert" (1 volume). These translations have been
described as faithful to the original. In 1979, the series was
continued with 4 books, entitled "The Caravan of Death", "The
Secret Brotherhood", "The Evil Saint", and "The Black Persian",
continuing the oriental adventure which had started with "In the
Desert". Only between 3000 and 4500 copies were sold per volume.
In 1980, some of these books were reprinted as pocketbooks, but
less than half of the printed books were actually sold, which put
an end to all plans for further English translations. (By the
way, the German original of "Winnetou" had sold about three
million copies in the edition as volumes 7 to 9 of "Karl May's
collected works" alone, when I bought it many years ago.) In
1998, there seems to have been a new edition of Michael Shaw's
translation of "Winnetou", and in 1999, David Koblick published
his abridged translation of the first volume of "Winnetou".
In this first (and only) volume of his autobiography, Karl May
describes his life until about 1887/88 and then turns to the
current events of 1910, when he had to defend himself against
various slanderous accusations, touching only upon those events
from the meantime which are somehow connected with these lawsuits.
In the time from 1887 to 1899, he wrote most of those novels which
have been the foundation of his lasting popularity. In 1899/1900,
he went on his long journey through the Orient and, in 1908, he
visited America. In the unwritten second volume of his
autobiography, Karl May had planned to discuss those novels and
his travels in detail. Here, I only want to give a short list of
his work and a few events in his life after 1887:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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