Charles Romey
Louis Charles Réparat Geneviève Octave Romey (26 December 1804 – 12 April 1874) was a French historian, journalist, literary critic and translator.
Biography
Charles Romey was born in Paris, the son of Baron Louis Romey (1759–1835), a diplomat, writer and historian of Sicilian origin who served in Spain and Italy and was mayor of Nice during the Empire, very fond of literature and history, for which he left a large library of those subjects to his son.
Charles studied at the liberal College of Sorèze (Languedoc), and traveled in Italy and, above all, Spain. At the end of the Restoration and at the beginning of the July monarchy, he already practiced political and literary journalism in Paris. He collaborated in Le Courrier Français, of left-liberal tendency, and wrote for the Annales de la Littérature, L'Artiste, the Revue Encyclopedique and the Revue Française, also participating as editor in the projects of the Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture, of a kind of bilingual Spanish-French dictionary, the Guide de la conversation en trois langues, français, espagnol et mexicain (1862), Pierre Larousse's Grand Dicctionnaire Universel du siècle XIX and the Encyclopedie des connaissans utiles, and directed Le Foyer between 1834 and 1836.
In addition, Romey wrote a Histoire d'Espagne (1839) of incomplete character and very uneven content, improved in its translation from French into Spanish by Antonio Bergnes de las Casas with critical and etymological notes, the Historia de España (1839–49), important because it prompted Modesto Lafuente to write a reply, his Historia general de España.
He was also editor of Paris Littéraire and in May 1844 he began to write for the theater. In 1862, he published Voyage à travers mon livres, an anthology or excerpt of his works, which includes a translation of Cervantes' El licenciado Vidriera. He was a correspondent of the Royal Academy of History and in 1845 received the cross of the Legion of Honor.
He translated works from Spanish and, especially, from English (James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Brontë sisters); he was a literary critic and edited with notes the literary and economic works of his friend Armand Carrel and an anthology of Chateaubriand. His political ideology oscillated between liberalism and republicanism.
References
- Esteban de Vega, Mariano (2003). "La Historia de España de Romey y su Recepción..." In: Jean-René Aymes & Mariano Esteban de Vega, eds., Francia en España, España en Francia. La Historia de la Relación Cultural Hispano-Francesa (Siglos XIX-XX). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
