Ants Oras

Ants Oras (8 December 1900 – 21 December 1982) was an Estonian translator and writer.^[1]

Oras was born in Tallinn and studied at the University of Tartu, graduating with a Master of Philosophy degree in 1923. He also obtained a Bachelor of Literature degree from Oxford University.

From 1928 through 1934, he was a lecturer at both Tartu and Helsinki University. Between 1934 and 1943 he was a professor at Tartu. Oras fled to Sweden in 1943 during World War II and the German occupation of Estonia, then to England in 1949, then on to the United States where he settled in Gainesville, Florida. From 1957 to 1958 he was a visiting professor at Helsinki University, and in 1965 he became a US State Department visiting lecturer in Sweden. In 1972 he became professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and received an honorary doctorate from that university in 1975. He died in Gainesville, Florida, aged 82.

Ants Oras was the author of several books, including one on the works of John Milton, as well as an account of the Occupation of the Baltic states titled The Baltic Eclipse. He also translated Shakespeare, Goethe (including Faust), Pushkin, Virgil, Alexander Pope and Molière into Estonian, as well as many Estonian works into English, German, Swedish, French and Spanish.