Daphne Woodward was a translator of

French literature French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by French people, French citizens; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of Franc ...

into the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

. In particular, she was responsible for translating eight books in the

Inspector Maigret Jules Maigret (), or simply Maigret, is a fictional French police detective, a '' commissaire'' ("commissioner") of the Paris ''Brigade Criminelle'' ('' Direction Régionale de la Police Judiciaire de Paris:36, Quai des Orfèvres''), created ...

series by the Belgian detective writer

Georges Simenon Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (; 12/13 February 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a Belgian writer who created the fictional detective Jules Maigret. One of the most prolific and successful authors of the 20th century, he published around 400 ...

. These were commissioned by

Hamish Hamilton Hamish Hamilton Limited is a publishing imprint and originally a British publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half- Scot half- American Jamie Hamilton (''Hamish'' is the vocative form of the Gaelic Seumas eaning James ''Jame ...

during the 1950s and 1960s and gained wider popularity through the

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

Maigret series. They included ''

Maigret's Failure ''Maigret's Failure'' (French: ''Un échec de Maigret'') is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon featuring his famous creation Jules Maigret. Overview Fumal, an infamous bully and the owner of meat-packing industry, orders Ma ...

'' (1962) and '' Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett'' (1963), a translation of the very first novel in the series, '' Pietr-le-Letton'', first published in 1931. In the late-1940s she was secretary to

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler (, ; ; ; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was an Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest, and was educated in Austria, apart from his early school years. In 1931, Koestler j ...

.Koestler, A. and C., '' Stranger on the Square'', page 53

References

French–English translators {{UK-translator-stub