The Best Translation of The Charterhouse of Parma
The Charterhouse of Parma was written in French. 3 recommended editions, ranked — with Gröblé’s verdict on which to read first.
Richard Howard
Modern Library · 1999 · 532 pages
Howard is a poet, and his Stendhal reads like one wrote it. The register is more elevated than Sturrock's, which matches Stendhal's own admiration for the prose of the Napoleonic Code.
Every recommended edition, compared
Sturrock keeps Stendhal's conversational speed, the quality Balzac and Tolstoy both envied. The Waterloo sequence in particular reads like dispatches from the field.
The Proust translator also did Stendhal, and the result is more ornate than the French strictly calls for. Scott Moncrieff's English is gorgeous on its own terms, worth reading as a period artifact.
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Reading The Charterhouse of Parma in translation
The Charterhouse of Parma was written in French, so unless you read French, the translator decides the book you actually experience — its register, its pace, how it sounds read aloud. Two editions of the same work can feel like different books.
The ranking above is Gröblé’s: one reader’s verdict on which English gets you closest, not a publisher’s blurb. Start with the top pick; reach for the others when you want a different angle on the original.