Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished by G. S.

OVID,.

$7,800.00

Item Number: 146369

London: Printed by William Stansby, 1626.

First edition of George Sandys’ famous verse translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with engraved title page. Small folio, bound in contemporary calf, illustrated with engraved title by T. Cecil, and full-paged engraved portrait of Ovid by Marshall. In very good condition, names. Rare and and desirable.

"In the Metamorphoses Ovid attempts no less a task than the linking together into one artistically harmonious whole all the stories of classical mythology. And this he does, until the whole range of wonders is passed in review, from the dawn of creation, when chaos was changed by divine fiat into the orderly universe, down to the age of the poet himself… Every important myth is at least touched upon… The poem thus forms a manual of classical mythology, and is the most important source of mythical lore for all writers since Ovid's time" (Miller, Ovid III:xi-xii, Loeb Classical Library). "It is at once a comprehensive account of Latin mythology and a feat of fictional construction which taught innumerable later writers, among them Chaucer and Dante" (Clute & Grant, 739). Shakespeare, Marlowe, Drayton, Spenser, and Chapman were all deeply indebted to Ovid's "collection of legends of transformations" (Peck, 1151).