W. R. S. Ralston / WRSRalston
William Ralston Shedden-Ralston (1828-1889), known in his early life as William Ralston Shedden, who later adopted the additional surname of Ralston, was a noted British scholar and translator of Russia and Russian. William studied Russian literature. He translated 93 of Ivan Andreevich Krylov’s two hundred fables, and this work, published in 1868 as Krilof and his Fables, ran to numerous editions. The following year he brought out a translation of Ivan Turgenev’s Nest of Gentlefolk as Liza; in 1872, his 439-page Songs of the Russian People as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life, and in 1873 a bloodthirsty collection of Russian Folk Tales.
