Translating ‘unprejudiced, bright and philanthropic views’: Henry Brougham and Anglo-Swedish exchanges in the early nineteenth century

During the Romantic period, translation played a key role in the mediation of reform ideas from Britain to the Nordic countries, and many translators of texts aiming at social reform wished to instigate change in their home countries. This article focuses on how Henry Brougham’s programme for popular education, as presented in Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825), was made available to Swedish readers in a translation by Frans Anton Ewerlöf, in 1832. The translation process and the representation of Brougham in Sweden in the 1820s and 1830s are discussed. Ewerlöf read and decided to translate Brougham’s text in 1827, and a few years later he travelled to Britain to observe how Brougham’s ideas had been put into practice. As a result, the Swedish translation combines travel writing with Ewerlöf’s own reflections on Brougham’s text, offering a foreigner’s assessment of what had transpired in Britain after Brougham wrote his book.