陈以侃

Chen Yikan is a name associated in Chinese reading circles mainly with translation and personal essays. Public information about him is limited, and his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background are not clearly documented. Judging from the seven works held in the collection, his work follows roughly two threads. The first is translating Somerset Maugham's short stories, chiefly the four-volume Collected Short Stories of W. Maugham, along with individual volumes such as The Gentleman in the Parlour, Ashenden, and The Summing Up-era stories; his translations attend to rhythm and voice, bringing Maugham's wit and worldliness into Chinese. The second is translating foreign essays and fiction, such as Richard Ellmann's essays in A Long the Riverrun and Alice Munro's The Progress of Love. He also writes cultural essays such as A Guide to Pretension: How to Seem Cultured, with a witty, teasing tone. His works appear under classics, essays, and foreign literature, suggesting that he is best understood as a translator-author who takes part in contemporary Chinese reading life through translation and essays.