Alexander Louis Teixeira de Mattos (9 April 1865 – 5 December 1921) was a journalist, literary critic and publisher, who gained greatest fame as a translator.

Teixeira de Mattos moved with his family to England from Amsterdam in 1874 and was educated at the Kensington

Kensington

Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...

 catholic public school. He worked as a correspondent, editor and dramatic critic for several Dutch newspapers. On 20 October 1900, he married Lily Wilde, née Sophie Lily Lees (1859-1922), the widow of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's older brother Willie Wilde

Willie Wilde

William 'Willie' Charles Kingsbury Wilde was an Irish journalist and poet of the Victorian era and the older brother of Oscar Wilde.-Background:...

. During the First World War he was head of the intelligence section of the Department of War Trade Intelligence.

He was responsible for many extremely perceptive and well-executed English translations of major French and Dutch literary works, including works by Émile Zola

Émile Zola

Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

, Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...

, Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...

, Jean Henri Fabre

Jean Henri Fabre

Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre was a French entomologist and author.-Life:Fabre was born in Saint-Léons in Aveyron, France....

, Maurice Leblanc

Maurice Leblanc

Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes.- Biography :Leblanc was born in...

, Gaston Leroux

Gaston Leroux

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...

, François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, and Louis Couperus

Louis Couperus

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was a Dutch novelist and poet during the Belle Époque. There is a wide variety of genres in his oeuvre, which contains poetry, fairy tales, psychological novels, and historical novels...

. The high quality and readability of his work was such that many of his translations are still in print today; although some of these are over a century old, they have yet to be superseded by a more modern version.

Translations of the work of Louis Couperus

• Ecstacy. A study of happiness (1892)
• Majesty (1894)
• The books of small souls (4 volumes, 1914-1918)
• Old people and the things that pass (1918)
• The tour. A story of ancient Egypt (1920)
• The inevitable (1920)
• The hidden force. A story of modern Java (1922)

External links

• Works by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Sources

• Short Probert Encyclopedia bio
• Stephen McKenna, Tex. A chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. London, 1922
• R. Breugelmans, Louis Couperus in den vreemde. Leiden, 2008² [includes 10 letters by Tex to the Dutch writer Louis Couperus]