It’s nearly impossible to avoid all the talk about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this summer, and we have Emily Wilson to thank for at least some of that. Before she started commenting on the, ahem, weaker parts of Nolan’s adaptation, the British classicist, translator, and professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania made history in 2017 as the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English verse.

Ahead of her third nonfiction book, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature, coming out in September, Wilson recently shared with Vogue five books that helped her translate the Odyssey. You’ll find them all below.

Homer’s Odyssey: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies by Lillian E. Doherty
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Homer’s Odyssey: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies — $127, Bookshop

Sorry, this one’s an academic book, so it’s pricey, but you might be able to find it at your local library. It’s a great collection of scholarly essays on the poem, offering a solid sample of the exciting literary criticism that has been—and still is—done on Homer. My own views on the poem have been shaped by the work of many brilliant colleagues and predecessors, including those in this volume and many others. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to Irene de Jong, whose narratological commentaries on both the Odyssey and the Iliad have helped me and many other Homer scholars better understand how sophisticated and fluid Homer’s narrative perspective really is.

Essays in Criticism (1865) by Matthew Arnold
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Essays in Criticism — $27, Bookshop

This collection includes Arnold’s essays on translating Homer. He never actually translated Homer himself, but he had a lot to say about how it should—and especially shouldn’t—be done, spending many pages tearing into a contemporary translator (poor Francis Newman) for his convoluted, odd, and wordy approach. I always find it amusing when people call my work “modern,” and even more so when they say it’s “not Victorian.” I actually drew a lot of inspiration from Arnold, maybe the most Victorian of Victorians, in his description of Homer’s key qualities: plainness of syntax and thought, rapidity, and nobility. I felt those traits are truly essential to the Greek original, and they weren’t well captured in most twentieth- and twenty-first-century English versions. There were also parts of Arnold’s own verse style that inspired me, especially in his blank verse poem “Sohrab and Rustum,” which shows some of those qualities—lines like “Unwillingly the spirit fled away.” It’s neither “modern” nor “Victorian,” and it has a kind of Homeric speed and simplicity.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
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A Wizard of Earthsea — $15, Bookshop

I’ve loved this book since I was a kid and have reread it many times. Like the Odyssey, it’s about travel, identity, and a clever man’s journey away from one community and back to another. But mainly, I thought of LeGuin’s style, especially in this book, as one of many guiding lights when I was figuring out how to capture the vividness (the Greeks called it enargeia) of Homeric poetry. Of course, LeGuin writes prose, not metrical verse, but there’s something very beautiful, plain, noble, and rapid—very Homeric—about her style here. Her sentences often have a lovely rhythm to them, like: “This is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.”

War Music by Christopher Logue
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War Music — $20, Bookshop

Logue was a jack-of-all-trades who didn’t know any Greek, yet he still managed to create a pretty amazing set of poetic takes on the Iliad, originally designed for live radio performance. I read this (like LeGuin) at a f—During my formative years, Logue helped shape my understanding of what I could do to capture the energy of Homeric similes and the distinct sense of the Homeric sublime, without the excess and wordiness that have weighed down many translations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Translator’s Invisibility by Lawrence Venuti
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The Translator’s Invisibility
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I’ve read a great deal of translation theory and scholarship on the history of translation. I don’t always agree with Venuti, but I find him consistently thought-provoking. This book is a classic in translation studies, and I found it very useful to think alongside. Venuti, who translates contemporary Italian and Catalan literature, argues that translators should “foreignize” their work to challenge the expectations of English-speaking readers. It was partly through reading and reflecting on Venuti that I came to see that the expectations for retranslations of ancient Greek and Roman texts differ from those for translations of modern fiction—and that, as a result, re-translators of ancient literature, like me, may need to approach the task differently when conveying the otherness of these wonderfully strange yet vividly familiar ancient works.

Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some FAQs about the five books that shaped Emily Wilsons translation of Homers Odyssey and Iliad

General Background Questions

1 Wait Emily Wilson translated the Odyssey AND the Iliad
Yes She published her translation of the Odyssey in 2017 and her translation of the Iliad in 2023 She is the first woman to publish a full English translation of both Homeric epics

2 What are the five books that shaped her translation
While she has read hundreds the five foundational texts she often cites as most influential are the original Ancient Greek text of Homer Richmond Lattimores 1951 translation Robert Fagles 1990 translation the Loeb Classical Librarys GreekEnglish edition and a book called The Cambridge Companion to Homer

3 Why does she need other books if she can read the original Greek
Because translation isnt just about vocabulary She uses other translations and scholarly guides to challenge her assumptions see how other experts solved tricky problems and ensure she isnt missing a double meaning or a cultural reference that she might have glossed over

Questions About the Specific Books

4 Why is the original Greek text so important
Thats her primary source However ancient manuscripts have errors and variations She has to decide which version of a line to trust The original text is the raw material but its also a puzzle she has to solve line by line

5 What did she take from Richmond Lattimores translation
Lattimores version is famous for being very literal and following the Greek line count closely Wilson respects his accuracy but uses him as a warning of what happens when you prioritize literalness over poetry She uses him to check the meaning of words then works to make that meaning sound beautiful in English

6 How is Robert Fagles translation different from Wilsons
Fagles is known for his sweeping dramatic and highly poetic language Wilsons translation is deliberately more strippedback sharper and more modern She read Fagles to understand the grand epic style then actively pushed against it to create a voice that feels more