Robert Nisbet Bain was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 historian and linguist who worked for the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

.

Biography

Bain was a fluent linguist who could use over twenty languages. Besides translating a number of books he also used his skills to write learned books on foreign people and folklore. Bain was a frequent contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica

Encyclopædia Britannica

The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...

. His contributions were biographies and varied from Andrew Aagensen to Aleksander Wielopolski. He taught himself Hungarian in order that he could read Mór Jókai

Mór Jókai

Mór Jókai , born Móric Jókay de Ásva , outside Hungary also known as Maurus Jokai, was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist.-Early life:...

 in the original after first reading him in German. He translated from Finnish, Danish and Russian and also tackled Turkish authors via Hungarian. He was the most prolific translator into English from Hungarian in the nineteenth century. He married late and died young after publishing a wide range of literature from or about Europe.

Works

• Gustavus III. and his contemporaries 1746-1792. 2 Bände. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894
• The daughter of Peter the Great. A history of Russian diplomacy. Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1899
• Peter III. Emperor of Russian. The story of a crisis and a crime. London: Archibald Constable, 1902
• Biography of Leo Tolstoy, 1903
• Scandinavia. A political history of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900. Cambridge: University Press, 1905
• The First Romanovs. A History of Moscovite Civilisation and the Rise of Modern Russia Under Peter the Great and His Forerunners. 1905. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1967.
• The last King of Poland and his contemporaries. London: Methuen, 1909
• Charles XII and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire 1682-1719, NA Kessinger Pub. Co. 2006, ISBN 1-4326-1903-9

Translations

• Russian Fairy Tales, 1892
• Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, London : Lawrence and Bullen 1894
• Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, 1896
• Tales from Tolstoi, 1901
• Tales from Gorky, 1902

Translations

• Mór Jókai
  Mór Jókai
  Mór Jókai , born Móric Jókay de Ásva , outside Hungary also known as Maurus Jokai, was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist.-Early life:...
  
  :
  • Egy Magyar Nábob, 1850; engl. A Hungarian Nabob, New York : DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1899
  • The Day of Wrath
  • The Poor Plutocrats
• Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
  Jonas Lie
  Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie was a Norwegian novelist, poet, and playwright who is considered to have been one of the Four Greats of 19th century Norwegian literature, together with Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Alexander Kielland.-Background:Jonas Lie was born at Hokksund in Øvre Eiker, in...
  
  :
  • Weird Tales from Northern Seas