Mary Anne Sadlier’s trans-Atlantic links: Migration, religion and translation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to studies in transnational book history by examining the trans-Atlantic links between religion, translation and migration as illustrated by the life and work of an Irish translator in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Mary Anne Sadlier (1820–1903) is mostly known as a prolific Irish-American author of Catholic, immigrant and patriotic novels. Regarded today as one of the most influential writers of the Famine generation, she emigrated from Ireland to North America, and married into a successful Catholic publishing family, D. & J. Sadlier. This essay offers a departure from the existing literature. Despite the fact that she translated and edited numerous works from the French, Sadlier’s translations remain largely unexplored in the critical literature. Religion, morality and education were the driving force behind her translations, and her work illustrates the growth of a Catholic literature in English in the constructive period of both the Irish and the American Catholic Church. Moreover, the example of a woman who was in her day successful outside the domestic arena as a writer-translator-editor-publisher invites us to touch on issues of social and cultural authority for women at the time. Sadlier’s story is symptomatic of a wider and emergent Catholic transnational culture – or translocal culture – in the nineteenth century. Mobility and translation, therefore, challenge fixed notions of identity and nationality. Beyond reflecting the hyphenated Irish-American experience, Mary Anne Sadlier’s life and work provide us with a sound example of the ways in which translation contributed to extending and multiplying trans-Atlantic connections.