From philosophy to literary journalism
Courtney was born in Poona, now Pune, in 1850 and educated at Bath and University College, Oxford. A fellowship at Merton followed in 1872. After a period as a school headmaster, he returned to Oxford in 1876 as a fellow of New College, teaching philosophy until 1890. His books on John Stuart Mill and ethics brought philosophical argument to readers beyond the classroom, while theatre remained an active interest.
In 1890 he joined the Daily Telegraph, writing literary and dramatic criticism. He became editor of the Fortnightly Review in 1894 and continued until his death in 1928. His writing ranged from tragedy to contemporary fiction and the position of women writers; The Feminine Note in Fiction prompted an early critical response from Virginia Woolf. After the death of his first wife, Cordelia, he married the editor Janet Elizabeth Hogarth in 1911. She later wrote The Making of an Editor, an account of his life and work.
The English voice of Undine
The held book names Fouqué as author, Courtney as adaptor from the German and Rackham as illustrator. It is the second impression, printed in February 1911 after the first printing of October 1909, with William Heinemann in London and Doubleday, Page in New York on the title. Courtney’s prose introduces the knight Huldbrand and the water-spirit Undine, whose marriage brings the human world into contact with the laws and claims of the elemental world.
The opening describes the fisherman’s cottage between lake and forest, using an intentionally old-fashioned storytelling voice. That language helps sustain a romance in which landscape can shelter, threaten and act upon the characters. The chapter sequence follows courtship, marriage, estrangement and the consequences of a broken bond. Courtney’s contribution is the English retelling, while Rackham supplies the accompanying visual interpretation. His separate theatrical work on Undine forms part of his wider interest in drama, but the held volume is the prose narrative rather than a script.
