The article considers the translation of W.M. Thackeray's essay "Going to see a man hanged" about capital punishment published in the Russian journal "Russian Messenger" in 1858. It was written at the beginning of the English author's carrier, therefore, demonstrating his first steps and experiments in narrating techniques. Thackeray's interest in genre of essay was defined, on the one hand, by the general tendencies of the English literary process of his epoch (it is known that in the genre of essay wrote such prose writers as Ch. Dickens, E. Bulwer-Lytton, later R. Kipling), on the other hand - by the individual features of the writer's identity. It was just this genre that allowed Thackeray to make experiments with style and expressive means. Among the reasons for addressing the English author's writing there are popularity of the author (the 1850s are the period, when both essays and novels by Thackeray were quickly translated), genre (the 1840-50s were the time of the Russian essay development) and theme of the essay (the theme of death penalty was considered by both Russian and Western writers. The fragments which are the most representative from the standpoint of authorial and genre peculiarities of Thackeray's essay have been chosen to analyse, namely, description of the spectators' psychological state, inclusion of landscape description in the narration, a fragment rendering the controversy on Newgate novel, description of beholders, recording of the narrator's attitude towards the event, narrator's conclusion on the observed scene. When translating the first fragment the Russian Messenger translator rendered the author's idea of death-life opposition, though changed some original sentences grammatically. Translating the landscape description, its function originally performed in the English text was given without semantic loss and kept in the translated text. When rendering Thackeray's dispute with school of Newgate novel it is obvious that the translator was keen to highlight the positive features of the girl's character who serves as a prototype of images in criminal novels of E. Bulwer-Lytton and Ch. Dickens, strengthening the narrator's sympathy to such model that a bit later would be used in the essays by F.M. Dostoyevsky, V.A. Gilyarovsky and others. In translation of description of social crowd structure the interpreter of the Russian Messenger treated the author's intentions with apparent interest. The sympathy towards a tradesman appeared to be underlined, whereas the author's sarcasm with respect to sham aristocrat was rendered adequately. The extract describing the narrator's attitude towards the event was rendered with some transformations, namely, the translator successfully manipulated with Grammar tenses, changing present into past tense, transmitting indelible impression left after the execution, he paid special attention to numerous epithets of Thackeray's essay. The author's ideological position shown in the final fragment was rather close to the genre conventions of the Russian & ocy;& chcy;& iecy;& rcy;& kcy;& ocy;& vcy;. The Russian Messenger translator correctly defined the author's idea of the given extract and made his own focus, as a result of which there appeared sympathy towards the condemned prisoner ("criminal" was translated as "sufferer"). The Russian translator was less dismissive to the peculiarities in question - he included his comments into the translating test explaining the unknown notions to the readers, got involved into narration game introducing some modifications into the translating text, highlighted the key points in the description of attendants and condemned to death. The proposed analysis allows for the conclusion of organic entrance of Thackeray's translating writing in the genre environment of Russian literature. Despite poetological difference in Russian sketch and English essay, the translator of "Russian Messenger" could see in Thackeray's writing the features, which were typologically close to the Russian sketch as a genre - landscape psychologism, active author's position, sympathy to the low rank and miserable people, experiments with narrative modes, investigation of social urgent problem within the essay genre. It is worth noting that the translation of W. Thackeray's essay was made in the period when general level of translations was rather low, while the Russian Messenger's translation was notable for its entirety and accuracy of rendering not only the author's style, but also national realia that was likely to be unknown to the wide readership. When possible, the Russian translator rendered the individual aspects of Thackeray's writing without distorting conventions and rules of Russian language, such transformations did not affect the general tone of narration. This fact by itself has demonstrated a particular demand of the Russian literary process of the mid-19th century in translation of works written in similar genre and theme.
