Books in the Mhra European Translations series

Die Waffen nieder! (1889), translated into English in 1892 as Lay Down Your Arms, was an international bestseller. Its Austrian author Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) chose the medium of fiction in order to reach as broad an audience as possible with her pacifist ideals. Challenging the narrow nationalisms of nineteenth-century Europe, Suttner believed that disputes between nations should be settled by means of arbitration rather than armed conflict. She devoted her life to campaigning for the cause of peace,and in 1905 became the first female recipient ofthe Nobel Peace Prize. Suttner's influential novel yields insights into the early development of calls for a united Europe and an end to the arms race.This English translation of the novel was carried out as a 'labour of love' by the eminent Victorian surgeon and medical scholar Timothy Holmes (1825-1907), the editor of Gray's Anatomy, for whom this was an unusual foray into the world of fiction. Holmes was Vice-Chairman of the London-based International Arbitration and Peace Association and a contemporary of Suttner. His translation helped to spread Suttner's views across the Anglophone world, and contributed to the growth of the peace movement in the period before the First World War.

The anonymous fifteenth-century French verse translation of Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae, contained in a single known manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fr. 25418, fols 1-74r, is a revised and abridged version of the major French translation, Le Roman de Fortune et de Felicité, edited by Béatrice Atherton as her doctoral thesis for the University of Queensland (1994). The title of the present critical edition is derived from the opening strophe of the reviser's Prologue: 'Pour le Tout Poissant honnourer | ... Contre Fortune ... | Dez dis Böece vueil conter | C'om dit de Consolacion', which indicates the Christian didactic purpose intended and expressed in moral lessons for living in this world. Consisting of books I-IV only of the Consolatio, the text lacks the complex philosophical issues of book V and throws into relief the dichotomy of Fortune and Felicity. Pruning of the mythological narratives, historical examples, and nature images by the reviser produced a somewhat lean abrégé of Boethius's thought, but with Christian emphasis. With prudent editing, the translation constitutes a coherent whole and is recognised as one of the thirteen distinct medieval French translations of the Consolatio Philosophiae.