François Soulès

He spent twelve years in Great Britain working as a French teacher. His first publications resulted directly from that profession: A concise and expeditious method for attaining the French language (1776), followed by A New Grammar of the French Language with exercises upon the rules of syntax, dialogues, vocabulary, idioms (1785). These manuals to the French language were well received for their stylistic elegance, their reduced number of rules and their more popular phraseology, compared to existing manuals.

Soulès own works and translations suggest an interest in the Anglo-American political sphere. He wrote a well-informed Histoire des troubles de l’Amérique anglaise, écrite sur les mémoires les plus authentiques (1787), dedicated to Louis XVI. With this publication he participated in the political debate following the American Revolutionary Wars. He furthermore translated or wrote a number of works relating to American, British and French foreign policy, and to the British politics and parliamentary system.

Soulès returned to France in time to participate in the French Revolution. He was an elector in 1789 and was charged with surveying the guarding of the Bastille between 14 and 18 July 1789. Based on these experiences he wrote Événements de Paris, ou Procès-verbal de ce qui s’est passé en ma présence depuis le 12 juillet 1789 (1789). In 1790 he spoke in defence of the king in the Société des amis de la constitution but was interrupted by the deputy Biozat for speaking against the Constitution. He was a friend of Thomas Paine, whose Rights of men (1791) he translated into French. The translation of a number of other texts by Paine, published by François Buisson under the title Recueil des divers écrits de Thomas Paine (1793), is attributed to him. He published a political tract of his own in 1792.

Soulès’ work was supported by the government under the post-Thermidorian Convention and the Directory, suggesting that his opinions were considered to be in line with official policy. In 1795 he was a beneficiary of the program set up by the Convention in support of people of letters. Later, he was among the translators hired by the Directory in order to make ‘useful’ literature accessible to the French public. In that quality he participated, with François-Joseph-Michel Noël and André-Samuel Cantwell, in the translation of Nouvelle géographie universelle (1799) by the Scottish author William Guthrie. Their contribution was more than pure translation since they ‘ameliorated’ the original with additional information amounting to a third of the text’s length. Soulès also translated the third volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1801).

Soulès translated a number of travelogues, of which Arthur Young’s travels in France and Italy are best known. The latter conveniently appeared in 1796 during Napoleon’s campaigns on the peninsula. In the preface Soulès stated that his translation could be a useful geographical tool for readers who wanted to follow the 1796 French ‘triumphant’ campaign in Italy. Soulès also translated novels in the gothic and sentimental genre by Ann Radcliffe, Elizabeth Helme and Agnes Musgrave. He furthermore published several novels of his own in similar genres.

Soulès’s translations were often positively reviewed and considered precise and faithful to the original. In the translator’s preface to his translation of Agnes Musgrave’s Edmond de la forêt (1799) he states that the duty of the translator is to render the translation as exact as possible, comparing his work with that of a ‘faithful mirror’ showing the original text with its ‘beauty and its faults’. Commenting on this translation of Ann Radcliffe’s La Forêt, ou l’abbaye de Saint-Clair (1794), Élizabeth Durot-Boucé claims that Soulès wavers between faithful translation and free adaptation.

References

François Morand, Année historique de Boulogne-sur-mer, recueil de faits et d’événements intéressant l’histoire de cette ville, et rangés selon leurs jours anniversaire s(Boulogne-sur-mer, librairie de Mme Vve Déligny, 1859).

Peter Michael Jones, « Translations into French of Arthur Young’s Travels in France (1791–1801) », La Révolution française 12 (2017).

François Soulès, Statuts, ordre et réglements du Parlement d'Angleterre : ouvrage nécessaire pour l'intelligence de papiers publics, l'histoire de ce Royaume ; & tout ce qui a rapport à ce gouvernement (London, Paris, Lallemant de Sancierres, 1789)

François Soulès, De l'homme, des sociétés, et des gouvernements (Paris, Debray, 1792).

Richard Champion, Réflexions sur l'état actuel de la Grande-Bretagne, comparativement avec son état passé, tant politique que civil, & sur son commerce, accompagnées de quelques pensées touchant l'émigration (Paris: Lagrange, 1788).

Fanny Lacôte, Le marché de la terreur : l’exportation, la traduction et la réception critique du roman terrifiant en France, 1789-1822 (Université de Lorraine; University of Stirling, 2018).

Jean-Luc Chappey et Virginie Martin, « À la recherche d’une « politique de traduction » : traducteurs et traductions dans le projet républicain du Directoire (1795-1799) », La Révolution française 12 (2017).

Élizabeth Durot-Boucé, ‘De l’intertextualité dans les traductions françaises des romans d’Ann Radcliffe’, Palimpsestes 18 (2006) 147-164.