The Stranger from the Sea
Page 40
Historical Note
W. T. (William Thomas) Stead (1849–1912) was an influential British editor and pioneer of investigative journalism, the “New Journalism” in Matthew Arnold’s famous phrase. The Pall Mall Gazette under his innovative editorship was to the fore in exposing hypocrisy and injustices in British society, and a series of articles in 1885 (the main year of this novel)—all fearless, well-researched, and morally principled—shocked the reading public with its exposure of sexual exploitation of girls and young women. Stead in his working life was connected with many leading figures including politicians from William Gladstone to Cecil Rhodes. In the early 1890s he also espoused the cause of spiritualism. He died on the RMS Titanic, bound for a Peace Conference in the United States at the invitation of President Taft.
The story of Hans Lyngstrand appears in Fruen fra havet (The Lady from the Sea, 1888) by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906). The first English translation of the play was that by Eleanor Marx-Aveling (1890), used for the play’s first performance in May 1891 in the very circumstances described in this novel. A good modern translation of The Lady from the Sea is that for the New Penguin Ibsen, editor Tore Rem (Volume 3, Penguin Books 2019) by Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggerik. For the most acclaimed recent life of Ibsen, readers are referred to Henrik Ibsen: The Man and The Mask by Ivo de Figueiredo, translated by Robert Ferguson (Yale University Press, 2019). For a discussion of the play’s character Hans Lyngstrand and its general view of creative art, see With Vine-Leaves in His Hair: The Role of the Artist in Ibsen’s Plays by Paul Binding (Norvik Press 2006).
The story that Hans tells Martin in Chapter Ten is an early version of that which appears as “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” in Winter’s Tales (first published by Putnam, 1942) by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), (1885–1962).