Koteliansky's co-translations read as richly evocative sites conjuring up the complex play of identification, theatricalisation and negotiation in the borderlands between languages, and they clearly allowed each writer individually to feel they were uncovering a new aspect of Russian literature. The collaborative ventures invite very different approaches too, as a 1919 letter from Mansfield to Koteliansky suggests:

All three co-translators construed their work very firmly in the economic and practical realities of the publishing world; they proved clear-sighted cultural go-betweens, keen to promote a favourable receptive environment, aware of the potential marketplace for newly translated materials, and alert to the financial issues at stake. Both the Woolfs at Hogarth, and Mansfield and Murry at the Athenaeum had every reason to be keeping an eye on readership figures and balance sheets, while Koteliansky was, by this time, surviving only on his work as a translator. This chapter will pick up on questions of texts-in-the-making to examine the translators’ craftsmanship when shaping the works in view of publication: how selecting, editing and adapting the materials inevitably transformed them too. From this angle, co-translation entails a specific form of coauthorship, the translations never appearing in quite the same format as the texts that Koteliansky was acquiring from his Russian and Soviet networks. They were shaped for a different readership, which sometimes included modifying their genre. As we saw with ‘Stavrogin's Confession’ in Chapter 3, the poetics and editorial politics of translating were firmly interwoven – the subtle, suggestive resonances within the texts could impact directly on censorship, marketing ploys and the cultural politics of reception.