The Iliad, Book III: Helen Reviews the Champions. [With] The Iliad, Book XVIII: The Shield of Achilles.

FAGLES, Robert.

$275.00

Item Number: 137120

Two rare Grand Street Publications separate printings of Books III and XVIII of Robert Fagles’ renowned translation of Homer’s Iliad. Octavo, two volumes. Association copy, inscribed by author on the front panel of Book XVIII, “Charles and Brenda – Wonderful to have you back in Princeton with us – Love, Bob.” The recipient, Charles Tomlinson, was a prolific English poet, translator, academic, and illustrator who taught for thirty-six years in the English Department of Bristol University, where he became Emeritus Professor. Tomlinson was an authoritative translator of poetry from the Russian, Spanish and Italian, including work by Antonio Machado, Fyodor Tyutchev, César Vallejo, and Attilio Bertolucci. He collaborated with Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud and Edoardo Sanguinetti in the writing of Renga, and with Paz alone in the writing of Airborn/Hijos del Aire. He edited The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation and the Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams. In fine condition. A very unique example linking two great translators.

Between 1961 and 1996, Fagles translated many ancient Greek works. His first translation was of the poetry of Bacchylides, publishing a complete set in 1961. In the 1970s, Fagles began translating much Greek drama, beginning with Aeschylus's The Oresteia. He went on to publish translations of Sophocles's three Theban plays (1982), Homer's Iliad (1990) and Odyssey (1996), and Virgil's Aeneid (2006). In these last four, Bernard Knox authored the introduction and notes. Fagles's translations generally emphasize contemporary English phrasing and idiom but are faithful to the original as much as possible.