author

J. Donkersley

Best known for an English blank-verse translation of Jean Racine’s Athaliah, this elusive writer seems to have worked more as a translator and educator than as a public literary figure. Little biographical information survives, which gives the book an old-world mystery of its own.

1 Audiobook

Athaliah: A Tragedy Intended for Reading Only, Translated Into English Blank Verse, From Racine (A. Gombert's Edition, 1825)

Athaliah: A Tragedy Intended for Reading Only, Translated Into English Blank Verse, From Racine (A. Gombert's Edition, 1825)

by J. Donkersley, Jean Racine

About the author

J. Donkersley is a little-documented translator associated with Athaliah: A Tragedy, an English rendering of Jean Racine’s play. Library and public-domain catalog records consistently credit Donkersley as the translator, and surviving editions place the work in the 19th century.

One digitized edition of Athaliah was published in 1873, and the text itself identifies the translator as connected with South Street Academy in Huddersfield. That suggests Donkersley may have been involved in education as well as literary translation, though readily available sources do not provide a fuller confirmed life story.

Because so few reliable biographical details are preserved online, Donkersley is remembered mainly through this translation work. For modern listeners, that makes the book itself the clearest introduction to the author: careful, formal, and devoted to bringing a classic French tragedy into readable English verse.