N. D'Anvers

LC name authority rec. n90629657

Bell produced a surprisingly large volume of work while active. The list below only gives a small flavour of her output. She used the pseudonym Nancy D'Anvers or N. D'Anvers (Nancy of Antwerp) until her marriage, after which she wrote as Mrs Arthur Bell.

Her first major work was a translation of Jules Verne's Les pays des fourrers. The original work had been published in France on 19 June 1873, and Bell had finished her translation by October, with Sampson Low publishing The Fur Country in November, in time for the Christmas market. This was only the first of her three Jules Verne translations. She may have contributed to a fourth translation, of Around the World in 80 Days, but the extent of her input is uncertain.[1]

She continued to work until 1920, producing translations, and religious, travel, and art history books until about 1920. She was an ardent Catholic and produced several hagiographies.[1] She also wrote some books for children including Nanny, Pixie, Dobbie, Red Jem, Pierre: A Tale of Normandy, Hindu Tales etc.[4]

In 1902, the publisher George Bell & Sons contracted her to write a biography of James McNeill Whistler. Whistler was appalled, and there is a long correspondence of 24 letters in which Bell tried to get Whistler to agree to photographs of his paintings being used in the book. The book was only published in 1904, after Whistler's death, and the letters form part of the Whistler collection at the University of Glasgow.[5]

Many of Bell's books were illustrated by her husband Arthur, and the lithographs form an important example of his work. Sixteen of his paintings are in public collections in the UK.[6]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Bell_(author)