Bartlett, Rosamund

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Bartlett, Rosamund

PERSONAL:

Education: Durham University, B.A.; Oxford University, D.Phil.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Russian, School of Modern Languages & Cultures, Durham University, Elvet Riverside, New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, England.

CAREER:

Durham University, Durham, England, lecturer in Russian, 2001—. Fellow, European Humanities Research Centre, Oxford University.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Best Biography for 2004, Moscow Times, 2005, for Chekhov: Scenes from a Life.

WRITINGS:

Wagner and Russia, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Anna Benn) Literary Russia: A Guide, Papermac (London, England), 1997, new edition, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2006.

(Editor and contributor) Shostakovich in Context, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Translator and author of notes and introduction) Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, About Love and Other Stories, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Chekhov: Scenes from a Life, Free Press (London, England), 2004.

(Editor, and translator with Anthony Phillips) Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, A Life in Letters, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Vjaceslav Ivanov: Russischer Dichter-europäischer, edited by Wilfried Potthoff, Carl-Winter-Universitätsverlag (Heidelberg, Germany), 1993; Khovanshchina: English National Opera Guide, edited by Jennifer Batchelor and Nicholas John, John Calder, 1994; Diaghilev: Creator of the Ballets Russes, edited by Ann Kodicek, Barbican Art Gallery/Lund Humphries, 1996; Dmitry Shostakovich: Sbornik statei k 90-letiyu so dnya roshdeniya, edited by L.G. Kovnatskaya, [St. Petersburg, Russia], 1996; Tchaikovsky and His World, edited by Leslie Kearney, Princeton University Press, 1998; Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature and Society, edited by Andrew Wachtel, Northwestern University Press, 1998; Tchaikovsky and His Contemporaries, edited by Alexandar Mihailovic, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1999; New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, Macmillan (London, England), 2000; The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky, edited by Jonathan Cross, Cambridge University Press, 2002; and The Cambridge History of Russia, edited by Dominic Lieven, Cambridge University Press. Contributor to periodicals, including Slavonic and East European Review, Economist, Slavonica, and Muzykal'naya akademiya. Also contributor of translations to books and periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

A scholar of Russian music and literature, Rosamund Bartlett is a university lecturer who has written on such composers as Richard Wagner, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Peter Tchaikovsky, but has received considerable attention for her works on the Russian dramatist and short-story writer Anton Chekhov. Critics have appreciated her contribution of editing and co-translating Chekhov's collected correspondence in A Life in Letters, and Bartlett was heavily reviewed for the unique biography Chekhov: Scenes from a Life.

Bartlett's biography is different from most others in that she focuses on the importance of landscapes in Chekhov's life and builds her book around sometimes surrealistic impressions of Russian and other geography on the artist. For some critics, this approach works quite well, while other reviewers considered it confusing at best. The author begins her book with the writer's early years, discussing his love for the Russian Steppes and for the forested countryside outside Moscow, and she ends with his final weeks at a German spa, where he succumbed to tuberculosis in 1904. Much of the rest of the book jumps around from location to location without regard to chronology. Helen Zaltzman, writing for the London Observer, felt this approach results in a "laborious, frustrating place-by-place portrait," while also complaining that Bartlett does not adequately address Chekhov's writings, especially his plays, which are given "barely a sniff." On the other hand, London Telegraph contributor George Walden lauded the biography and its "deliberately impressionistic" style. Walden further attested that Chekhov "is more informative about Chekhov the man than a conventional biography, and more instructive about the roots of his work than dry literary criticism." He concluded: "This is a remarkable biography about an inspirational artist." Anthony Radice, writing for the Contemporary Review, similarly felt that "Rosamund Bartlett's approach is as refreshing and invigorating as those summer expeditions must have been for the young Chekhov: it allows us, with him, to breathe freely, as we enjoy this liberating and mind-broadening biography." New Statesman writer Dominic Dromgoole added that Bartlett "has succeeded in freeing the playwright from the dead hand of conventional, what-happened biography."

Among Bartlett's other books is her debut work, Wagner and Russia, which focuses on how the Russians received the operatic works of the German composer from the nineteenth through twentieth centuries. "With Wagner as the catalyst, Bartlett … has fashioned a unique English-language vehicle for understanding the sophisticated realm of Russian artistic culture," according to Carol Reynolds in Notes. "Throughout the book," Reynolds pointed out, "readers will enjoy refreshingly unfamiliar comparisons between Wagner and Fyodor Dostoyevsky or The Ring and Leo Tolstoy'sWar and Peace, as well as juxtapositions of Wagner's aesthetics with Bolshevik Revolutionary ideals." Although the critic warned that readers should be familiar with Russian culture before delving into Wagner and Russia, she concluded that the book "is a rich volume, blending vivid strands of Russian music, art, theater, philosophy, and politics."

Bartlett has also been praised for other publications regarding Russian culture, including her edited work Shostakovich in Context, which Notes reviewer Esti Sheinberg regarded as a "worthwhile contribution to the Shostakovich scholarship of today," and the cowritten Literary Russia: A Guide, which is a "marvelous tool to help those interested in Russian literature find their way," according to Ron Ratliff in Library Journal.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Contemporary Review, July, 2005, Anthony Radice, "A New Perspective on Chekhov," review of Chekhov: Scenes from a Life, p. 51.

Financial Times, August 28, 2004, Rosamund Bartlett, "Portrait of the Writer As a Restless Russian: To Better Understand Chekhov, Visit His Beloved Landscapes, Says Rosamund Bartlett," p. 11.

Guardian (London, England), July 15, 2004, "From Russia, with Love."

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2006, review of Chekhov, p. 23.

Library Journal, February 15, 2006, Maria Kochis, review of Chekhov, p. 117; August 1, 2006, Ron Ratliff, review of Literary Russia: A Guide, p. 84.

New Statesman, July 19, 2004, Dominic Dromgoole, "State of Grace," review of Chekhov, p. 51.

Notes, June, 1998, Carol Reynolds, review of Wagner and Russia, p. 920; June, 2001, Esti Sheinberg, review of Shostakovich in Context, p. 910.

Observer (London, England), July 11, 2004, Helen Zaltzman, "Out of Steppe with Anton," review of Chekhov.

Publishers Weekly, January 9, 2006, review of Chekhov, p. 48.

Telegraph (London, England), April 7, 2004, George Walden, "A Tour around Chekhov," review of Chekhov.