Isabella Fyvie Mayo translated The Great Sin into English with Vladimir Chertkov in 1905. The translation appeared in The Times (London) on 1 August 1905 as A Great Iniquity, and then as a Free Age Press pamphlet (1906).1
The 1905 edition carries a translator’s footnote on the chapter IX endorsement of Henry George’s method: it holds only under the existing state order.2 That reading of the clause is in the first English edition, not only in later scholarship.
The title
The English title does not translate the Russian one. The Russian is the great sin;3 the English is a great iniquity, a word of legal and public wrong rather than of sin.4
Who chose it is not known: the translators, or The Times, possibly as a condition of printing it (its editor in 1905 was George Earle Buckle).5 Chertkov’s correspondence with The Times and the pamphlet’s front matter are the places to look.
The “I. F. M.” of 1904
The Project Gutenberg text of [[Bethink Yourselves!]] (1904) credits the translation to “V. Chertkov (V. Tchertkoff) and I. F. M.”. The vault’s source log leaves the co-translator unidentified: “Could be Isabel F. Mayo? Needs verification.”6
The same pair in consecutive years makes it likely that “I. F. M.” is Mayo; it is not established. A fuller attribution may be found in another witness of the 1904 text, the Times printing or the International Union / Ginn & Company pamphlet (Boston, 1904).
Open questions
- Her biography: dates, nationality, career, and how she came into Chertkov’s circle.
- Whether “I. F. M.” (Bethink Yourselves, 1904) is her.
- Who chose the title A Great Iniquity.
- Whether she translated anything else for the Free Age Press.
- The wording of the 1905 translator’s footnote on chapter IX: the dive cites it but does not quote it, and the reader’s 1905 text does not include it.
Dive provenance
- 1905-the-great-sin (2026-06-30) — named as Chertkov’s co-translator in the scholarship sweep; the Times / Free Age Press publication chain; the translator’s footnote on chapter IX. Given a page of her own on 2026-07-03 from the reader’s annotation A1, for the title question. The 1904 “I. F. M.” link was found on 2026-07-27 in
website/src/sources/log.md. Converted to the footnote style 2026-10-02.
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The dive’s sources (
index.md,dossier.yaml); Internet Archivegreatiniquity00tolsuoft. ↩ -
Named in the dive’s scholarship layer (
dossier.yaml) as the 1905 translator’s footnote on the clause «при существующем государственном строе и обязательных податях невозможно придумать какого-либо другого лучшего, более справедливого, практического и мирного решения» (PSS 36:229): “under the existing state order and with compulsory taxes, it is impossible to devise any other better, more just, practical and peaceful solution”. English: ours. The 1905 English has “under the existing State organization and compulsory taxation”. ↩ -
«Великий грех» (PSS 36, title). ↩
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The 1905 English title is A Great Iniquity. ↩
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From Johan’s reader annotations (the dive’s
annotations.md); not yet researched. ↩ -
website/src/sources/log.md, entry for Bethink Yourselves; outside this dive. ↩