Name Archibald Colquhoun Role Translator | Died 1964 | |
Archibald Colquhoun (1912-1964) was a leading translator of modern Italian literature into English. He studied at Ampleforth College, Oxford University, and the Royal College of Art. Originally a painter, he worked as director of the British Institute in Naples before the Second World War, and in Seville after the war. He worked in British intelligence during wartime. He later headed Oxford University Press' initiative to bring out Italian literary classics in translation. He scored his biggest success with Lampedusa's The Leopard, a translation that is still in print. He was also one of the first translators to introduce Italo Calvino to Anglophone readers. He was the first winner of the PEN Translation Prize, which he won for his translation of Federico de Roberto's The Viceroys. He also wrote a biography of Alessandro Manzoni.
According to Robin Healey's Twentieth-century Italian Literature in English Translation, Colquhoun was one of the top 10 translators of Italian literature of the last 70 years, alongside Patrick Creagh, Angus Davidson, Frances Frenaye, Stuart Hood, Eric Mosbacher, Isabel Quigly, Raymond Rosenthal, Bernard Wall and William Weaver.