author
George Burnham Ives
1856–1930
Best known as an American editor, bibliographer, and translator, he helped bring major French writers to English-language readers and also worked on influential literary reference projects. His career ranged from painstaking book scholarship to widely read translations of authors including Balzac and George Sand.
1 Audiobook
Penal Methods of the Middle Ages: Criminals, Witches, Lunatics
by George Burnham Ives
About the author
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1856, George Burnham Ives became an American bibliographer, editor, and translator whose work connected English-speaking readers with French literature. He is remembered for translating and editing works by writers such as Honoré de Balzac, Alphonse Daudet, Théophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, and George Sand.
Alongside his translation work, he was also active as a literary scholar and compiler. He prepared A Bibliography of Oliver Wendell Holmes and was associated with reference and editorial projects that reflect a careful, book-minded approach to literature. That mix of scholarship and readability helps explain why his name still appears so often in older editions and library catalogs.
Ives died in 1930 in his hometown of Salem. Although he is not widely known today outside bibliographic and translation circles, his work played a real part in making classic French writing more accessible to American and British readers.