Austryn Wainhouse is an American translator, primarily of French works and notably of Marquis de Sade, sometimes using pseudonym Pieralessandro Casavini.
As a graduate of Harvard University and prior to completing his graduate program at the University of Iowa, Austryn Wainhouse traveled around Europe before settling in Paris where he began working for Maurice Girodias at Olympia Press, and later as an editor of Merlin. His first wife Mary, also known as Muffy or Muffie, also worked for Girodias, and later came to be living with him.
He produced the first unexpurgated English translation of Justine for Olympia Press in 1953. Two years later, Wainhouse returned to the United States. Wainhouse later revised his translation of Justine for publication in the United States by Grove Press in 1965.
In 1960, Gay Talese described him as:
| “ | .. a dis-enchanted Exeter-Harvard man who wrote a strong, esoteric novel, Hedyphagetica, and who, after several years in France, is now living in Martha's Vineyard building furniture according to the methods of the eighteenth century. | ” |
Wainhouse won the National Book Award in category Translation for Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity (NY: Vintage, 1971).
By 1983, he had established publishing firm The Marlboro Press in Marlboro, Vermont.
Read more about Austryn Wainhouse: Bibliography