Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Ovid in America


From my good friend Peter D'Epiro, author of The Book of Firsts: 150 World-Changing People and Events from Caesar Augustus to the Internet, comes this fascinating "first":

The first literary work composed in English in what became the US was a translation of the Metamorphoses by George Sandys (1578-1644): Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologized, and Represented in Figures. He was treasurer of the Virginia Company for its settlement at Jamestown from 1621 to 1624.

Cover of George Sandys's 1632 edition of Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished

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