< Back

Homer; Pope, Alexander (trans.); Buckley, Theodore Alois (ed.).
The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer [illustrated by John Flaxman].
Publisher: Peacock, Mansfield and Britton, London;
Date of Publication: 1903
Stock Code: 14827
Octavo, pp., xxxvi, 850. With tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait, numerous wood-engraved illustrations and maps within text by John Flaxman. Prize binding in full polished tree calf; spine on five bands, floral ornaments in gilt to compartments, titled in gilt to brown morocco spine label; armorial badge of St. Michael’s Grammar School, Westgate on Sea within gilt floral border to upper board; gilt rules to edges of boards, floral rolls in blind to turn-ins; all edges marbled, marbled end-papers in matching design. Prize bookplate inscribed to one ‘Oswald Fordham’ from Edward M. Hawtrey of St. Michael’s School, Westgate-on-Sea to front paste-down. Joints rubbed, spine sunned. Contents clean and bright. A very good copy indeed. A superb prize-bound copy of Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey, originally published in 1715 and 1725 respectively. Pope’s translations (actually completed with a team), transformed Homer’s epic duology into rhyming couplets. They were the landmark project of Pope’s career. They remain enduringly popular versions of the foundational texts of the Western poetic canon. Illustrated by John Flaxman (1755–1826) the seminal English Neoclassical sculptor, draughtsman, and illustrator. Flaxman was commissioned to undertake the drawings for the Iliad and Odyssey while in Rome and these ‘clean line’ illustrations became some of his best known and well regarded work. £85.00