Oliver Stallybrass translated among others Knut Hamsun, Milan Kundera and Axel Jensen.

Stallybrass grew op in an intellectual environment. He was the youngest son of Edward Adolf Sonnenschein (1851 – 1929) an English Classical Scholar and writer on Latin grammar and verse. And his uncle owned a publishing house: W Swan Sonnenschein & Co.

Because of the hostility to Germans during the First World War, he changed his surname into Stallybrass, the name of his grandmother.