Language: French

Jane Eyre translation: 1966          

As a laureate of the Agrégation competitive examination for entry into the teaching profession in France and a specialist of Charles Dickens (whom he focused his PhD thesis on) he lectured at the Université de Caen (1949-1964) before becoming a full professor at the Sorbonne (Paris 3) from 1964 to 1982.

Besides being an academic, he was a translator and he worked on texts by Emily and Charlotte Brontë, but also Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and William Shakespeare. A former president of the “foreign literatures” committee of the National Book Center, a member of the association ATLAS – Assises de la Traduction Littéraire en ArleS –, founded in 1984 under the aegis of the Association of the Literary Translators of France – of which he was president from 1989 to 1992, Sylvère Monod was awarded the ‘Grand Prix national de la traduction’. He is the author of several essays, including History of English Literature from Victoria to Elizabeth II (Paris: Armand-Colin, 1970), and he wrote a novel, Madame Homais, which was published by Belfond in 1988.

Text by Céline Sabiron, Léa Koves & Vincent Thiery