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Reverend Lewis Page Mercier (9 January 1820 – 2 November 1875)〔''Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths'', 1839, British Records Office, London, also available at http://www.ancestry.com/〕 is known today as the translator, along with Eleanor Elizabeth King, of two of the best known novels of Jules Verne: ''Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas'' 〔 〕 and ''From the Earth to the Moon, and a Trip Around It''. To avoid a conflict of interest with his position as chaplain, Mercier wrote under the pen names of Louis Mercier, MA (Oxon) and Mercier Lewis.〔 〕 ==Chronology== In 1871, the publishers Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington acquired the English rights to several of Jules Verne's books.〔 〕 For their first work Sampson Low & Co. chose ''Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas'' published in November, 1872, with the translator Rev. Lewis Page Mercier (1820–1875), B.A. Oxon., 1841, M.A. 1855. Born on 9 January 1820 (christened 7 February 1820, Old Church, Saint Pancras, London,〔 〕) the only son of Francis Michael Jacob Mercier, Lewis Mercier came of French Huguenot stock; his grandfather was pastor of the French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street, London. He almost certainly spoke French at home as a child, and may have been one of the few native French speakers to translate Verne. The family was located in the London Borough of Hackney,〔 〕 home of the original silk industry of French mercers ((フランス語:mercier)). In 1837 Mercier entered Trinity College, Oxford,〔 〕 where he was the College Latin Essayist. In 1839 he received an open scholarship from the University.〔 〕 He received a Third in “Greats” (Greek and Latin) receiving his B.A. on 25 June 1841,〔 〕 and obtained a post-graduate bursary at University College, Oxford, the “Browne Exhibition”, established by one Browne in 1587. Forgoing an academic but at the time necessarily celibate career, he gave up his exhibition to marry Anna Marie Hovell〔 〕 in 1842. He became a deacon in 1843〔 〕 and a presbyter in 1845. In 1855 he was awarded his M.A. degree〔 from University College. His first posting was to Glasgow where he was Assistant Minister of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Chapel, 2nd master of the Glasgow College School, and Chaplain to the Garrison. While in Glasgow he was admitted to membership in the Glasgow Philosophical Society (15 November 1843).〔 〕 From Glasgow he moved on to be 2nd Master at a new school in Edgbaston, near Birmingham (1846). and headmaster (1849). In 1857 he moved back to Hackney, becoming headmaster at the St. John’s Foundation School and Assistant Reader at the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital in nearby Brunswick Square.〔''Crockford's Clerical directory'', London, 1858. See for example 〕 In 1861 we find him living at the school at age 41, head of a family of 9 children (ages 1,2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15), numerous servants and 25 pupils.〔U.K. Census, June 1861, available at http://www.ancestry.com/〕 Relieved of his position by the Governing Board in 1861, he then became Chaplain at the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital, then one of the most important charitable institutions in England. The Foundling Hospital〔R. H. Nicholls and F. A. Wray, ''The History of the Foundling Hospital'', London: Oxford University Press, 1935.〕 was the first public charity in England, established in 1739 by a Royal Charter granted by King George II and Queen Caroline. The buildings were erected on purchased by Thomas Coram, the ship captain who sponsored its establishment. Early benefactors were the painter William Hogarth and the composer George Friedrich Handel, who played at the opening and conducted his ''Messiah'' every year thereafter. Well known artists contributed paintings, and the Foundling Hospital became the first picture gallery in the country. Church services at the chapel with famous preachers, famous musicians, a professional choir and organist attracted large crowds of the most well connected people in London throughout the century. Charles Dickens who lived nearby attended regularly with a reserved pew. The buildings were torn down in 1926 to make way for a fish market, which was never built. In 1865 Lewis Mercier suddenly found it necessary to borrow £250〔 (【引用サイトリンク】url=http://calm.shakespeare.org.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=Overview.tcl&dsqSearch=(((text)='mercier')AND(Repository='SBTRO')) ) 〕 secured by a bond from Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh (Warwickshire), the wealthiest landowner in England, at the rate of 12% per annum. (Lord Leigh had appointed him Provincial Grand Chaplain to the Freemasons, Warwickshire in 1852.) By 1870, in ill health and unable to repay his debt when it came due, he was forced in extremis to seek extra funds by translating for Sampson Low, who were in the process of printing a religious book of his. Mercier offered one great advantage to Sampson Low: speed. A linguist of sorts, conversant with older French dialects, possibly fluent in multiple languages, he worked with his assistant Eleanor Elizabeth King (1838 — ??) to translate three Verne novels in little over a year in his spare time, enabling Sampson Low to come out with a new Verne book for the Christmas trade in 1872 and 1873. Unfortunately Mercier's shaky grasp of latter-day French idioms and limited knowledge of his era's science and technology led him into many foolish translating errors. He has also been pilloried in America and England for his stilted prose and his translations' many omissions. In view of his desperate financial situation it has been conjectured that the deletions could have been dictated by his editors at Sampson Low, however no hard evidence has been found to support this surmise. It is equally likely that he worked fast simply to get paid fast.〔Details of the errors in Mercier's translations and an explanation of how they occurred may be found in (【引用サイトリンク】title=How Lewis Mercier and Eleanor King Brought You Jules Verne ), ''Newsletter of the North American Jules Verne Society'', Vol. 12, No. 2, December 2005, and in expanded form in a publication of the same title, published by the Choptank Press, St. Michaels, MD, 2007.〕 A drastically cut version of Mercier's already-cut ''20,000 Leagues'' (175 pp.) was published by Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd, in the early 1900s. Mercier was forced to resign〔 ''Minutes of the Select Committees of the Foundling Hospital, 1864-1886'', unpublished, London Metropolitan Archives, London, UK.〕 his position at the Foundling Hospital by the Governing Board in early 1873 after troubles arose over his supervision of the schools, and he died on Tuesday, 2 November 1875,〔 Death Certificate, British Records Office, London, U.K.〕 the date his semi-annual payment of £15 to Lord Leigh was due. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lewis Page Mercier」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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