Clara Erskine Clement

Clara Erskine Clement was an American art historian, traveler, writer, and translator whose publications helped general readers approach European art and cultural history. English Conferences of Ernest Renan is her English rendering of five lectures that French scholar Ernest Renan delivered in London in April 1880. Four examine Rome and early Christianity, while the final lecture turns to Marcus Aurelius. James R. Osgood and Company issued the Boston edition in the same year. Clement retained the word “conferences” from Renan’s French title and explained that the usage was unfamiliar in English. Her work on the volume joined linguistic interpretation with historical subject matter, carrying arguments about Roman institutions, religious authority, and imperial culture into another reading community. Clement also produced substantial handbooks about artists and legendary subjects, sometimes publishing under the married name Clara Erskine Clement Waters. The translation belongs within that wider career of organizing and interpreting European cultural material for English-language audiences.