Bernard Guilbert Guerney (1894–1979)

Bernard Guilbert Guerney (1894-1979) was born in Nykolaev, in the former Russian empire. His parents named him Bernard Abramovich Bronstein. His first eleven years were spent in Russia, first in Nikolaev, and later in Dnepropetrovsk. In 1905, Guerney, along with his sister and mother, joined his father in New York City. It is not clear if he went to a formal school in Russia, but Guerney learned to read at the age of two, and was always fascinated with writing. Initially, his mother, Olga Grigorevna, well versed in French and German, was Guerney’s teacher, and introduced Russian and world literature to her two children. He graduated from the Thomson Harris High school in New York. While Guerney did not receive any further academic education, all education was through books and reading. Guerney’s writing career started as a teenager under the pen name “Gilbert Guerney” taken from the title character in Theodore Hook’s novel “Gilbert Guerney”. In 1917, soon after his first novel received acceptance for publication, he legally changed his name from Bernard Abramovich Bronstein to Bernard Gilbert Guerney.
Guerney wore many hats in the literary world. He was a well-known writer, publisher, poet, translator, editor, reviewer, and owner of a bookstore in New York City. He was one of the leading translators of classical and modern Russian literature, and his translations included authors like Bunin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorki, Turgenev, Merezhkovskii, Pasternak, and several others.

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