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| The illustrator of Big Business Billy was Edward Manteuffel-Szoege, a Jewish painter, graphic artist, woodcutter, and interior decorator, born on July 5, 1908, in Poland. During his short creative activity, he designed e.g. the decoration of the first Polish ocean liner M/S Piłsudski, the appearance of the sundial at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and the decoration of the luxury Wedel store at ul. Szpitalna. His illustrations for Korczak's book Big Business Billy, published in London in October 1939, are not known to the public. Edward Manteuffel-Szoege was murdered by the NKVD in Kharkiv, at the age of only 32. He is one of the victims of the Katyn Massacre. |
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| It is likely that Big Business Billy is translated not from the Polish original but from German Der Bankrott des Kleinen Jack. |
Big Business Billy is a novel by Janusz Korczak translated from Polish by Cyrus Brooks and illustrated by Edward Manteuffel. I prefer the title Little Jack's bankruptcy rather than Big Business Billy. The first one is closer to Janusz Korczak's original title; the latter is that of Cyrus Brooks. Brooks was the first person to translate and publish into English Bankructwo małego Dżeka published by Janusz Korczak in 1924 (in Polish). It is likely that Big Business Billy is translated not from the Polish original but from the German version, Der Bankrott des Kleinen Jack.
The novel tells the story of Dżek Fulton (Dżek is actually the phonetically assimilated Polish form of the English name Jack). The translator Cyrus Brooks renamed Dżek (Jack) to Billy in this English translation. Maybe Brooks or the British publisher liked the title with three B - Big Business Billy. Der Bankrott des Kleinen Jack which was used by Brooks for the English translation was translated from Polish to German by A. Gruszczyńska for the Berlin-based Williams & Co. publishing house specializing in children’s and young adult’s literature.
Brooks is known as a translator of my favorite children’s books by Erich Kästner. Brooks also translated works by Alfred Neumann, Leonhard Frank, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. For many years Brooks worked for the London Literary Agency A. M. Heath and is described as follows on the website dedicated to the history of this agency:
“Cyrus Brooks was born in 1890 and, as a young man, had moved to Berlin to teach English as a foreign language, becoming fluent in German at the same time. Still there when the Great War began in July 1914, Cyrus found himself stranded – and, like the thousands of other male citizens of the Allied Powers who were, by chance, studying, working, or holidaying in Germany at the outbreak of war, he was detained in the civilian internment camp Ruhleben, under the terms laid out by the Geneva Convention. It was here that Cyrus spent his war – and, by the time of the Armistice in 1918, he had fallen completely in love with German and European literature. It was a passion that would dictate the direction of his life”.
The illustrator of Big Business Billy was Edward Manteuffel-Szoege, a Jewish painter, graphic artist, woodcutter, and interior decorator, born on July 5, 1908, in Poland. During his short creative activity, he designed e.g. the decoration of the first Polish ocean liner M/S Piłsudski, the appearance of the sundial at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and the decoration of the luxury Wedel store at ul. Szpitalna. His illustrations for Korczak's book Big Business Billy, published in London in October 1939, are not known to the public. Edward Manteuffel-Szoege was murdered by the NKVD in Kharkiv, at the age of only 32. He is one of the victims of the Katyn Massacre.
The illustrator of Big Business Billy was Edward Manteuffel-Szoege, a Jewish painter, graphic artist, woodcutter, and interior decorator, born on July 5, 1908, in Poland. During his short creative activity, he designed e.g. the decoration of the first Polish ocean liner M/S Piłsudski, the appearance of the sundial at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and the decoration of the luxury Wedel store at ul. Szpitalna. His illustrations for Korczak's book Big Business Billy, published in London in October 1939, are not known to the public. Edward Manteuffel-Szoege was murdered by the NKVD in Kharkiv, at the age of only 32. He is one of the victims of the Katyn Massacre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSXUERSjMvs
