ABSTRACT
Roger L’Estrange is probably better known as a Tory polemicist than as a literary translator. Most critical investigations into his works have focused primarily upon his political career. Yet his translations of Latin, French and Spanish works display an impressive literary and cultural virtuosity. Like Aphra Behn at the end of her career, and in the same years (the 1680s), L’Estrange gradually turned away from pamphleteering and journalism and to translation, an increasingly lucrative activity. In the period that followed the Glorious Revolution more particularly, the ageing Tory writer became more and more marginalised politically. The Revolution brought his public career as a pamphleteer to an end and he was even briefly imprisoned in 1688 and 1691. His reputation for pithy writing was not lost on his booksellers, however, who had been happy to commission translations and continued to do so. L’Estrange thus had a late, eclectic career as a translator. Two early and successful ventures, Quevedo’s Visions (1678) and a version of the European best-seller, The Portuguese Letters (1678), were followed in quick succession by a selection of Erasmus’s Colloquia (1679), Cicero’s Offices (1680), then by Cervantes’ novellas (1687), an Aesop (1692), a book of Tacitus’ Histories (1694) and the complete works of Josephus (1702).1 The voluminous Aesop of 1692 was so successful that it was followed by a second volume of modern Aesopic fables in 1699.2 His near contemporary Aphra Behn, also writing for bread, although perhaps a more selfconsciously ‘literary’ author, also saw the potential of commercial translations. She specialised in Continental contemporary authors, but also contributed to a collective Ovid, and even an Aesop, as occasion offered.3
