Robert Baldick

Robert André Edouard Baldick, FRSL (9 November 1927 – April 1972), was a British scholar of French literature, writer, translator and joint editor of the Penguin Classics series with Betty Radice. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

He wrote eight books including biographies of Joris-Karl Huysmans, Frédérick Lemaître and Henry Murger and a history of the Siege of Paris. In addition he edited and translated The Goncourt Journals and other classics of French literature including works by Gustave Flaubert, Chateaubriand, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jules Verne, and Henri Barbusse, as well as a number of novels by Georges Simenon.

His sons are Julian Baldick, an author specialising in Sufism, and English academic Chris Baldick.

Selected bibliography

 * The Life of Joris Karl Huysmans. (Oxford University Press, 1955; new edition revised by Brendan King, Dedalus Books 2006)
 * Dinner at Magny's (Victor Gollancz, 1971)
 * The Life and Times of Frédérick Lemaître: Actor, Lover and Idol of Paris (Hamish Hamilton, 1959)
 * Against Nature (Penguin Classics) by Joris-Karl Huysmans (translator; Penguin, 1959)
 * The Goncourts (Bowes and Bowes, 1960)
 * The First Bohemian: The Life of Henry Murger (Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
 * The Memoirs of Chateaubriand  (editor & translator; Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
 * Three Tales (Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert (translator; Penguin, 1961)
 * Pages from the Goncourt Journal (editor & translator; Oxford University Press, 1962 & The Folio Society, 1980)
 * Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries (translator; Jonathan Cape, 1962)
 * Cruel Tales (Oxford Library of French Classics) by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (translator; Oxford University Press, 1963)
 * The Battle of Dienbienphu by Jules Roy (translator; Harper Row, 1963)
 * The Siege of Paris (Batsford, 1964)
 * Sentimental Education (Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert (translator; Penguin, 1964)
 * The Duel: A History of Duelling (Chapman and Hall, 1965)
 * Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jean-Paul Sartre (translator; Penguin, 1965)
 * Hell by Henri Barbusse (translator; Chapman & Hall, 1966)
 * The Trial of Marshal Pétain by Jules Roy (translator; Faber, 1968)
 * Around the Moon by Jules Verne (translator; J. M. Dent & Sons, 1970)
 * Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890s by Philippe Jullian (translator; Pall Mall Press, 1971)
 * Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs (translator; Panther, 1972)