John Oxenford
John Oxenford (born August 12, 1812 in Camberwell , London Borough of Southwark , † February 21, 1877 ibid) was an English playwright , critic, librettist and translator.
life and work
John Oxenford was a linguist who carried out many translations from German, especially works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , including From My Life. Poetry and Truth (translated 1846), as well as Johann Peter Eckermann's conversations with Goethe in the last years of his life (translated 1850).
His first stage work was My Fellow Clerk , which was performed at the Lyceum Theater in 1835 . Other well-known works were Porter's Knot (1858), Twice Killed (1835) and a version of Last Days of Pompeii (1872). From 1850 he was employed as a theater critic in the well-known London magazine The Times . He also wrote several opera libretti, including eight works for George Alexander Macfarren (including Robin Hood , 1860).
The work of Arthur Schopenhauer became known through Oxenford's translations in England. Via the detour of a critical, anonymously written discussion of this philosopher in the Westminster Review (1853), which was published in the Vossische Zeitung in German translation, he aroused the rapidly increasing interest in his work in Germany as well. In this treatise Oxenford presented Schopenhauer as a counterpart to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Richard Wagner's work also became popular in England through him.
His one-act play A Day Well Spent (1834/35), which has been reworked and expanded several times and performed for the first time in the New English Opera House on April 4, 1834, was the model for Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (1954). Wilder's piece became the basis for the musical Hello, Dolly! (1964) and the film of the same name (1969).
The Austrian theater poet Johann Nestroy used Oxenford's A Day Well Spent as a source for his farce. He wants to make a joke (first performance March 10, 1842 in the Theater an der Wien ).
Web links
- Literature by and about John Oxenford in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (accessed February 13, 2015; in English)
- Full biography in the Catholic Encyclopaedia (accessed February 13, 2015; in English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Oxenford, John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British playwright, librettist, critic and translator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 12, 1812 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Camberwell |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 21, 1877 |
| Place of death | London Borough of Southwark |