TITLE: The Iliad
AUTHOR: Homer translated by Alexander Pope
PUBLISHER: Nonesuch Press
PLACE: London
YEAR: 1931
EDITION: First Nonesuch edition
NUMBERED: 126 / 925
BINDING: Fully bound in Niger morocco, illustrated with decorative headpieces cast as individual type ornaments combined into friezes, spines lettered in gilt in compartments with raised bands, top edges gilt, other edges uncut, covers with double gilt borders, marbled endpaper
NO.OF PAGES:
SIZE OF EACH VOLUMES:
Height: 27.4 cm
Width: 16.3 cm
Depth: 6 cm
The colophon to The Iliad reads: "The Greek text of this edition is, by permission of the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, that of the Oxford Classical Texts. The English is printed from the first (1715) edition of Pope's Iliad. The ornaments have been designed, engraved and composed by and under the supervision of Rudolf Koch for this edition. It has been printed and made in Holland by Johannes Ensched?? en Zonen, Haarlem, inthe Greek type of J. van Krimpen and monotype cochin [on Pannekoek mould-made paper]. There are 925 copies for sale in England, and 525 copies for sale in the United States by Random House. This is number 126???.
TITLE: Odyssey
AUTHOR: Homertranslated by Alexander Pope
PUBLISHER: Nonesuch Press
PLACE: London
YEAR: 1931
EDITION: First Nonesuch edition
NUMBERED: 739 / 835
BINDING: Fully bound in Niger morocco, illustrated with decorative headpieces cast as individual type ornaments combined into friezes, spines lettered in gilt in compartments with raised bands, top edges gilt, other edges uncut, covers with double gilt borders, marbled endpaper
NO.OF PAGES:
SIZE OF EACH VOLUMES:
Height: 27.4 cm
Width: 16.3 cm
Depth: 6 cm
The colophon to The Odyssey reads: "The Greek text of this edition is, by permission of the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, that of the Oxford Classical Texts. The English is printed from the first (1725) editionof Pope's Odyesy. The ornaments have been designed, engraved and composed for this edition by and under the supervision of Rudolf Koch & Fritz Kredel. It has been printed and made in Holland by Johannes Ensched?? en Zonen, Haarlem, in the Greek typeof J. van Krimpen and monotype cochin [on Pannekoek mould-made paper]. There are 835 copies for sale in England, and 465 copies for sale in the United States by Random House. This is number 739???.
THE 1931 NONESUCH PRESS TWO-VOLUME LIMITED EDITION OF ALEXANDER POPE'S TRANSLATIONS
Homer is the traditional name of the author best known for the Greek epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. Whether he lived is unknown; if a real historical figure, Homer may have lived between 1100 and 850BCE. Believed by the Greeks of antiquity to be the first and greatest of the epic poets and regarded by Plato as the cultural leader of Greece and teacher of its tragedians, Homer has pervasively influenced the Western literary canon to the presentday. The first complete translation into English of the Homeric works in 1616 by the poet, dramatist and classical scholar George Chapman (c.1559-1634) remained the most popular version until the famous translation, from 1715-1725, of The Iliad and The Odyssey by the poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
Pope's translations were effusively praised by Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) -
poet, essayist, literary critic and lexicographer - who has been described by some as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history???. Johnson wrote that Pope???s Iliad was ???the greatest translation ever achieved in English or any other language", "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal??? and "certainly the noblest versionof poetry which the world has ever seen???. From their first publication, Pope's Homer translations were regarded as masterpieces, and were met with both scholarly and public acclaim. The classical scholar Richard Bentley was a dissenting voice, and Pope???s role in translating only a portion of The Odyssey (assisted by his collaborators William Broome and Elijah Fenton, who translated about half of the work) dented his reputation for a time. The rise of Romanticism prompted a marked reaction against the techniques of Augustan pomp and Pope???s neo-classical style. In the 20th century reappraisals of Pope partly overturned this earlier rejection, with critics examining Pope's motivations, depth, euphony and his facility with assonance and the play of vowels matching the "ceaseless pour of verbal music???"in the original Homeric texts.