Readers and editors of George Chapman’s translation of The Iliad have several versions to choose from. Chapman’s first translation of books 1–2 and 7–11, and Achilles Shield, a section of book 18, were both printed in 1598 and dedicated to the Earl of Essex. In about 1609 followed a translation of books 1–12, dedicated to Prince Henry, and with revisions to parts of the text already printed in 1598. Chapman’s translation of the entire twenty-four books appeared only in 1611, also dedicated to Henry, with marginal notes and a commentary appended to most of its books. A reissue of this text appears in Chapman’s Whole Works of Homer in 1616. Modern editors from William Cooke Taylor in 1843 to Allardyce Nicoll in 1956 have chosen the 1611 edition as their copy text, with varied attention to the paratextual specificities of this publication and to its relationship to the earlier versions of the translation.

The present volume, edited by Robert Miola, is also based on the 1611 text, and is the twentieth installment in the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations series, and the “companion” title (1) to Chapman’s translation of The Odyssey, recently edited for the same series by Gordon Kendal. It presents a text of Chapman’s translation and commentary, prefaced by an introduction, a brief note on editorial procedures, and some of Chapman’s own prefatory materials. The edition’s critical apparatus consists of brief textual notes, a list of Chapman’s “Neologisms and Contributions to the English Language,” a select bibliography, and an index to the introduction and notes. An eight-page glossary divided into proper names and vocabulary is further substantiated by extensive glossing of the text on the page. In the case of the translation proper and other verse sections of the volume, the glosses replace Chapman’s own marginal notes, which are placed with Chapman’s commentary at the end of each book. Footnotes record Chapman’s departures from Homer, some of his debts to his Latin intermediaries, and other critical and explanatory comments. Unlike Nicoll’s edition, this volume modernizes spelling (except “for the sake of meter or rhyme” [19]) as well as punctuation.

Miola’s energetic introduction covers broad ground, including Chapman’s importation of “contemporary dramatic idiom” (7) and technique into his translation, and his Latin intermediaries, but it pays the most sustained attention to Chapman’s artistic achievement: the translation’s “new and daring poetic language” (2), its metrical and rhetorical effects, and its relationship to Homer’s Iliad itself. Miola shows himself to be a sympathetic reader of Chapman with a sensitive ear for what he names the “sweet music” (2) of the translation, though the introduction could have incorporated some subheadings for the benefit of the reader. The introduction’s discussion of the specific textual and bibliographical incarnations of Chapman’s translation itself is surprisingly brief, mentioning the patrons and versions that the translation took on between 1598 and 1616 only in passing in a single paragraph (4). Miola’s emphasis is rather on Chapman’s development of his poetic project: the translation’s earlier versions are “attempt[s]” (5), culminating in the stylistic maturity of the 1611 text. This approach does fit with much of what Chapman himself says about the translation in 1611, but it glosses over the specific forms and occasional functions of these earlier versions, which are also worthy of consideration in their own right, rather than merely as forerunners to the completed text.

The relative absence of these issues from the introduction is reflected in the volume’s editorial choices. Miola does not include any of the dedicatory paratexts that also appear in the 1611 edition: Chapman’s dedicatory poems to Prince Henry and Anne of Denmark, or the dedicatory sonnets that appear in variant configurations in different copies. The edition’s note on its editorial procedures indicates that the volume contains only “a selection of preliminary material” (19), but more clarity on the omitted materials would have been welcome here. Moreover, since Nicoll’s edition only includes one of Chapman’s verse dedications to Henry, this edition might have taken the opportunity to make all the paratextual material more widely accessible.

This edition’s modernized and glossed text, spacious layout, and helpful notes and bibliography will certainly attract a wider audience to Chapman’s translation of The Iliad. The epic size of the hardback volume (measuring 11.4 × 8.8 inches on my count), however, and the brevity of its bibliographic information, may make it most useful in conjunction with both Nicoll’s edition and the early modern texts themselves.