Michael Leverson Meyer was an English translator, biographer, journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and dramatist.

Life

Meyer was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 into a timber merchant family of Jewish origin, and studied English at Christ Church College, Oxford. His first translation of a Swedish book was the novel The Long Ships

The Long Ships

The Long Ships or Red Orm is a best-selling Swedish novel written by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson . The novel is divided into two parts, published in 1941 and 1945, with two books each....

by Frans G. Bengtsson, published by Collins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

 in 1954. He is best known for his translations of the works of two Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

n playwrights, Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

 and August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

. Braham Murray

Braham Murray

Braham Murray, OBE is an English theatre director. He has been an Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester since its foundation in 1976.-Early years:...

 wrote of Meyer in his obituary published by The Guardian that Meyer was "the greatest translator of Ibsen and Strindberg into English there has ever been" even superior to William Archer

William Archer (critic)

William Archer , Scottish critic, was born in Perth, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of M.A. in 1876. He was the son of Thomas Archer....

.

Meyer's journalism appeared in the New York Review of Books. He also wrote acclaimed biographies of both these playwrights; the three volume work on Ibsen (1967-71) won the 1971 Whitbread Award for Biography and the work on Strindberg appeared in 1985. His autobiography Not Prince Hamlet was published in 1989.

Awards

For his translations of Strindberg the Swedish Academy

Swedish Academy

The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden.-History:The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. Modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. The motto of the Academy is "Talent and Taste"...

 awarded him their Gold Medal, the first time it had been given to an Englishman.

List of Original Works

• The End Of The Corridor, 1951

A novel based on his unhappy days at Wellington College

• The Ortolan, 1951

His first play, produced by Wrede in 1953, with Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

 in the lead, and again in 1965 by Braham Murray, with Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...

.

• Lunatic And Lover, 1982

A play about Strindberg's love life.

• Summer In Gossensass

About Ibsen's late love

• Meeting In Rome

Starred Kenneth Haigh

Kenneth Haigh

Kenneth Haigh is a British actor. He played the central role of Jimmy Porter in the very first production of John Osborne's seminal play Look Back in Anger in 1956. His performance in a 1958 Broadway theatre production of that play so moved one young woman in the audience that she mounted the...

, an account of a fictional meeting between the two giants