When Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey was first published, it was hailed by Moses Hadas as "surely the best and truest Odyssey in the English language" and won the prestigious Bolligen award. By universal consensus, the work is acknowledged to have an openness and immediacy unsurpassed by any other English translation. It confirms Fitzgerald's reputation as one of the greatest modern translators of the classics.
This new edition is the fist to include marginal English line numbers—along with 24 new line drawings by Jackie Schuman.
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald and Illustrated by Jackie Schuman.
Editorial Reviews
"A masterpiece. At last we have an Odyssey worthy of the original.” —William Arrowsmith, The Nation
"Fitzgerald has given us a version that far surpasses the prose versions in faithfulness to the dramatic and poetic life of the Odyssey...The English reader...can discover in [it] something of the surprising combination that is the Odyssey—a poem of marriage and family, husband and wife, father and son, that is also a poem of heroic adventure and romantic temptation." —Reuben A. Brower, Poetry
"A great achievement. The long-felt need for a poetic translation of the Odyssey has been filled." —Bernard Knox, The Hudson Review
About the Author
The ancient Greek poet Homer established the gold standard for heroic quests and sweeping journeys with his pair of classic epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Crowded with characters, both human and non-human, and bursting with action, the epic tales detail the fabled Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus as he struggles to return home. Homer’s epics have inspired countless books and works of art throughout their long history.
Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985) was an American poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students". He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. He also composed several books of his own poetry. Robert Fitzgerald's versions of the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Oedipus cycle of Sophocles (with Dudley Fitts) are also classics. At his death, in 1988, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.
