author
Ralph Browning Fiske
A little-known late-19th-century translator, he helped bring the dramatic, folklore-rich fiction of Erckmann-Chatrian to English readers. His surviving work suggests a young literary figure whose career ended almost as soon as it began.
1 Audiobook
The Count of Nideck adapted from the French of Erckmann-Chartrian
by Ralph Browning Fiske, Erckmann-Chatrian
About the author
Ralph Browning Fiske was an American writer and translator born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 16, 1870. He died there on June 15, 1898, at just 27 years old, which helps explain why so little biographical detail about him survives.
He is chiefly associated with English versions of works by the French writing duo Erckmann-Chatrian. Sources link him to The Count of Nideck, published in 1897 as an adaptation from the French, and to The Dean's Watch as translator.
Because the record is so sparse, Fiske is remembered less for a long literary career than for these few preserved translations. Even so, those books gave English-language readers access to atmospheric historical and supernatural tales that might otherwise have remained out of reach.