Michael Meyer (translator)

Michael Leverson Meyer (1921-2000) was an author, playwright and translator.

Meyer was born into a family of Jewish origin. His father Percy Barrington Meyer was a timber merchant. His mother Nora died of influenza in 1928. He was educated at Wellington College and Christchurch, Oxford.

His first translation of a Swedish book was the novel The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson, published by Collins in 1954.

He was best known for his translations of Ibsen and Strindberg which won him international acclaim, with over a thousand productions staged around the world during his lifetime.  

His biography of Ibsen published in 1967 won the Whitbread Biography Award. His biography of Strindberg was published in 1987. Both were widely described as definitive.

Meyer wrote one novel The End Of The Corridor and several original plays for stage and radio including The Ortolan produced in 1953 with Maggie Smith and in 1967 with Helen Mirren, Lunatic and Lover about Strindberg’s three lovers which won an Edinburgh Fringe First in 1978, Meeting in Rome was a fictional account of a meeting between Ibsen and Strindberg starring Kenneth Haigh produced for BBC Radio 4, and an adaptation of George Gissing’s The Odd Women was produced by Manchester Royal Exchange in 1992.

His memoir Not Prince Hamlet  published in 1989, was described by David Mamet as ‘Beautifully written, a delight to read’, and by Simon Callow as ‘A very special perspective and theatre and literary life. The Sunday Times review said Meyer was ‘one of the funniest men in London.’

Michael Meyer was visiting professor at several American universities including UCLA, Colorado and Dartmouth. He taught at Central School of Drama and was on the board of LAMDA.

He was the first Englishman to receive the Gold Medal of the Swedish Academy in 1964, appointed a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1971 and Knight Commander of the Polar Star in Sweden in 1977.

Braham Murray 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.

FAMILY

Meyer never married. He had one daughter Nora born in 1968, with his girlfriend painter Maria Rossman

He was in a long term relationship with teacher Sibylle Höschele from 1972.

For his translations of Strindberg the Swedish Academy awarded him their Gold Medal, the first time it had been given to an Englishman.[1]

• 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 in the lead, and again in 1965 by Braham Murray, with Helen Mirren.
• 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, an account of a fictional meeting between Strindberg and Ibsen.