With the publication of Georges Bataille, Critical Essays Volume 2: 1949-51 (trans. Chris Turner, eds. Alberto Toscano and Benjamin Noys), English readers now have access to all of the essays in volume 11 of Bataille’s Œuvres complètes and a good chunk of volume 12. The last promised volume of Critical Essays should cover the rest of volume 12.

I’ve updated the list of Georges Bataille – Oeuvres complètes and other French collections; English translations on this site. This is something I started during the first UK lockdown in early 2020, and which I have been updating since. Corrections or additions are very welcome.

Given the very useful “Bibliography and Notes” in Critical Essays, doing this update was an easy task. With Volume 11, this site’s bibliography is now mainly of use for showing where the pieces which are not in Critical Essays can be found – mostly in The Absence of Myth and Essential Writings.

We should be grateful to the editors and translator for including all the hitherto untranslated pieces from the years they cover, without leaving any missing from the years they cover, and generally not providing new translations of ones already in English just for the sake of it. Given the sporadic and inconsistent approach to translations of Bataille before this, this more systematic approach is very welcome. One thing which initially confused me is that some of Bataille’s longer reviews are split into two or three essays in the English.