Michael Meyer; Biographer of Ibsen, Strindberg

Michael Meyer, 70, prolific translator and biographer of Scandinavian playwrights Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Although he did his own writing in one novel and several plays, Meyer devoted his career to bringing the works of the two great Scandinavian dramatists to the English-speaking world and achieved eminence for his efforts. His translations of 16 plays by Ibsen and 18 by Strindberg have sold more than a quarter-million copies and are performed around the world. He did not begin to study Swedish until his late 20s and tackled Norwegian when he was nearing 40. He had completed a successful 1954 translation of a Swedish novel, “The Long Ships” by Frans G. Bengtsson, when he was approached by Doubleday to translate the major works of Ibsen. Those translations, published between 1960 and 1965, were followed by Meyer’s highly praised 865-page biography of Ibsen, which appeared in three volumes from 1967 to 1971 and won the Whitbread Prize. He spent five years translating Strindberg’s major plays, and the translations were published between 1968 and 1984. His 651-page biography of Strindberg appeared in 1985 and was praised in the Los Angeles Times as “tightly researched and relentlessly probing.” On Aug. 3 in London.