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Author: Mullner, Amand Gottfried Adolph

Biography:

MULLNER, Amand Gottfried Adolph (1774-1829: WBIS)

Amadeus Gottfried Adolf Müllner was born at Langendorf, near Weissenfels, in present-day Germany, on 18 Oct. 1774. After studying law at Leipzig, he established a practice in Weissenfels. He began publishing in 1799 and wrote well received novels, novellas, comedies, and tragedies. He was also a journalist, editor, and literary critic. He died at Weissenfels on 11 June 1829. This play, his most influential tragedy, dating from 1813, appears to be the only work of his translated into English in his lifetime—perhaps ever—and there were rival versions published in London and Edinburgh in the same year. The Edinburgh translator was Robert Pearce Gillies (q.v.). The London translator, William Edward Frye, was a Captain of Infantry in the British army at the time and is not known to have published poetry in English under his own name. But he was a well read and cultivated man. He was the son of Sarah (Pott) and John Ravel Frye, born in London on 29 Oct. 1793. There are some discrepancies in the records: the Eton School Lists have him in the Sixth Form in 1802 but army records indicate that he was already an Ensign in 1799: probably his Eton years were 1797-9. He served in Holland, in Egypt (medal for bravery), and in India. His reminiscences of travel in Europe 1815-19 were published in 1908 under the title After Waterloo. He returned from half-pay to the army as captain of a company in 1820 and in the same year was promoted to Major, but retired permanently in 1822. He did not marry and lived by choice in France. Other publications include translations of Schiller and Burger into Italian (1820) and of the Norse Edda into French (accompanied by some French poems of his own, 1844), and The Gods of the North, an Epic Poem translated from Danish to English (1845). He died at St.-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, on 10 Oct. 1853 and was buried there. (WBIS; “Adolf Müllner,” britannica.org 18 July 2023; ancestry.com 18 July 2023; findmypast.com 18 July 2023; MH 17 Oct. 1853; Salomon Reinach, ed., After Waterloo [1908])

 

Other Names:

  • Adolphus Mullner
  • Amand Gottfried Adolph Muellner
 

Books written (2):

Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. , 1819