Mała” historia przekładu. Złoty wiek angielskiej literatury dziecięcej w tłumaczeniach na język polski – zarys

The Golden Age of English-language literature for children began about 1865, when Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published, and it continued with the works of writers such as Louisa May Alcott, James Matthew Barrie, Lyman Frank Baum, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, Hugh Lofting, Alan Alexander Milne, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Edith Nesbit, Beatrix Potter, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pamela Lyndon Travers or Mark Twain. The first Polish translations of English children’s classics, in turn, appeared at the end of the 19th century and continued to be published throughout the 20th century. The main aim of the article is twofold. First, it proposes to create an outline of the history of Polish translations of English classical books for children, in the temporal perspective (from 1870s, when the first translations were published, up to now) as well as in terms of the quantity of translated works. Secondly, it attempts to answer the question about mutual influences between cultures, writers and works of art (in translation) and suggests the hypothesis that the masterpieces of Polish children’s literature were somehow “caused” and inspired by the translations of children’s classics created before them.