This epic volume brings together the two greatest adventure stories ever told – Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey – the twin heroic poems at the foundation of Western literature, retold here in prose.
Price range: £7.99 through £36.99
Price range: £7.99 through £36.99
| Author |
Homer |
|---|---|
| Imprint |
Wine Dark Press |
| Categories |
Fairy Tales, Myths & Legends Historical Fiction Sagas Fiction |
| ISBN | 9781528719742, 9781528770286, 9781528792776 |
| Formats Available | |
| Pages | 806, 804 |
| Publication Date | 26 October 2021, 25 October 2021, 20 October 2021 |
| Weight | 2.221 kg |
| Dimensions | 5.5 × 8.5 in |
This epic volume brings together the two greatest adventure stories ever told – Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey – the twin heroic poems at the foundation of Western literature, retold here in prose.
The Iliad is Homer’s legendary account of the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy, centred on the wrath of Achilles. The Odyssey follows the hero-king Odysseus on his long and perilous voyage home from that same war – beset by monsters, gods, and the sea – to his kingdom of Ithaca and his waiting wife Penelope.
Both poems are credited to Homer, regarded as one of the most influential writers of all time whose influence has been felt across thousands of years of Western art, literature, and film. Both stories are presented here in flowing English prose by the novelist Samuel Butler, originally published in 1900, alongside several essays and writings on Homer and his epics. Wine Dark Press is proud to gather both foundational epics in a single deluxe edition, remaining faithful to the original sources and set down whole for modern readers, to stand on the shelf beside the many stories they inspired.
Sitting at the heart of Wine Dark Press, both epics are given here in Samuel Butler’s clear English prose, set side by side as Homer’s readers have known them for centuries. We have gathered the two poems with a selection of essays and writings on Homer, so the reader holds the stories and the conversation around them at once. A brilliant celebration of Homer’s craft, this deluxe edition is designed for the lifelong classicist and the newcomer alike – one to endure a lifetime of reading.
The translator, Samuel Butler (1835 – 1902), is better remembered as the novelist behind Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh. He came to Homer late in life, rendering both poems in plain English prose, and his versions remain in use more than a century later. Pairing the two epics also stages a question Butler himself pressed: he doubted that one poet wrote both, arguing in The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) that the Odyssey was the work of a young Sicilian woman. Read side by side, the war poem and the homecoming poem invite exactly that comparison.
This Edition Includes:
Price range: £7.99 through £36.99
This epic volume brings together the two greatest adventure stories ever told – Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey – the twin heroic poems at the foundation of Western literature, retold here in prose.
