Metamorphosis

This book is amazing. The cover art is way better in person, its now the best looking clothbound i own. I didn't expect it to be. The pages are a perfect yellow tint and the print is very crisp. Its robust and handles nicely. Metamorphosis is one of the best works of literature in the ancient world and Ovid did not shy away from breaking tradition and adding his own touch to the mythology.

Very good

It s an awesome edition but i was expecting a bigger book. That being said the translation is amazing and a great read.

I bought this edition of the Metamorphoses having previously bought the Penguin Classics edition of this text. This clothbound edition is inevitably more robust than the paperback edition, and is made on quality paper and bound beautifully. The way a book one wants to keep for a lifetime should be, and makes it worth the extra cost. About the text and the book itself, and and what I like about it the following review I wrote about the paperback on Amazon will suffice: "Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the most influential books ever written. One can see the influence of it in literature through Montaigne's The Complete Essays , where it is often quoted, via Shakespeare and Dante, right down to Pound and Ted Hughes. Painters from Titian to Salvador Dali have also drawn on the stories in this book. My own introduction to it came initially from retellings and variations of stories by modern poets in After Ovid: New Metamorphoses which lead Ted Hughes, a contributor, to do a generous selection of his own versions in Tales from Ovid: Twenty-four Passages from the "Metamorphoses" . That last volume remains one of my favourite Hughes, and I treasure a memory of hearing him read some of his versions with a voice that seemed to reach back across time to Ovid and into the myths. All this led me to explore the full text for myself. My first incursion, not having enough Latin, was with a Penguin Classics prose translation ( Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics) ) which still makes for a good read. Like a number classic works such as the epics Homer and Virgil, the Metamorphoses works well in prose. Here is the source, or in some cases a retelling, of many myths that have reappeared over the years from before even Roman times to present day sometimes reappearing more recently for us in film, or on television. It is a collection of folk stories, creation myths, and even in small ways of history (though that is mythologised) as much as a continuous poetic narrative. The one common feature of each story is that it involves some form of transformation, hence the title. Being inclined towards poetry, I wanted to read this book in verse. There is a classic version in English, which Penguin Classics publish, by Arthur Golding (See ( Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics) ). The main drawback of this is that it's in Elizabethan English which we may be familiar with from Shakespeare and Marlowe. But beautiful though that is, it's not always as immediately approachable as the modern English of Hughes. However, much as I love that, it does not have all the stories. Sometimes he also intentionally used poetic licence and added modern allusions in the text, hence his versions should be taken as Hughes rather than literal translations, though they honour Ovid's spirit magnificently. This outstanding translation will serve to bring readers closer to the words of the original. The translator, David Raeburn, has clearly also learned from Hughes. The text also reads well as narrative. Hence, from my point of view, it is the version of Ovid to have, even above the prose version. Not just because Ovid was a poet. In a certain ways this book can be used as an encyclopaedia of Greek and Roman myths. There are wonderful notes at the back to explain various references as the long poem unfolds, plus a helpful Glossary-Index which is helpful if one wants to find various stories and characters in Ovid's narrative when not reading the book as a whole. Readers unfamiliar to poetry will have no difficulty following the narrative line here. But in verse there is more space on the page which makes it easier to find things in the text, whilst in the prose version sometimes the details are lost in the density of paragraphs. All in all, a marvellous Ovid which nobody should be without, though I still also love the Hughes. Here I can revel in being poly-amorous, and enjoy both. This translation is probably as close as anything can be to get to Ovid's original words in modern English".

This is a really nice pretty copy. Font, paper and binding are all nice. I enjoy the book and stories inside and it looks nice on the table or bookshelf. Hellenic classic!

Truly Ovid's best in my favorite translator's piece of wonderful writing. I just love this and other translations by Stanley Lombardo. Highly recommended! But also the great and very helpful and informative explanations in the rear part of the volume are highly appreciated. Other translations lack this feature.