The Best Translation of The Red and the Black
The Red and the Black was written in French. 3 recommended editions, ranked — with Gröblé’s verdict on which to read first.
Burton Raffel
Modern Library · 2004 · 560 pages
Raffel's English is plain and quick, which fits Stendhal's flat ironic narrator. The Modern Library intro is good on the airless post-Napoleonic France Julien is trying to climb.
Every recommended edition, compared
Gard nails Stendhal's dry irony, the epigraphs and authorial asides especially. Clean modern English, no archaic friction, and the psychology comes through unmuddied.
Slater's Oxford has the strongest scholarly apparatus on the English side, with deep notes on the Bourbon-Restoration politics that drive the plot. The translation itself is accurate, a little less alive than Gard.
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Reading The Red and the Black in translation
The Red and the Black 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.