We include the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, and leave the scholars to fight over how many Homers there were.
Homer: The Iliad. With an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D. —Loeb edition.
Homer: The Odyssey. With an English translation by A. T. Murray. —Loeb edition.
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. With an English translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. —Loeb edition.
The Odyssey of Homer; construed literally, and word for word. By the Rev. Dr. Giles. London: James Cornish & Sons, [no date; middle to late 1800s]. —Each word of the original is followed by an English translation.
Vol. I. Books I–VI.
Vol. II. Books VII–XII.
Vol. III. Books XIII–XVIII.
Vol. IV. Books XIX–XXIV.
Arranged alphabetically by translator; anonymous translations come last.
The Iliad of Homer. With notes. By W. G. T. Barter. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854. —In Spenserian stanzas.
The Iliad of Homer. Translated into English blank verse by William Cullen Bryant. Two volumes in one. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1870.
The Odyssey of Homer. Translated into English blank verse by William Cullen Bryant. Two volumes in one. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1871.
The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Literally translated, with explanatory notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley, B. A. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853.
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
— John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
A page or two of Chapman’s Iliads will persuade you that Keats understated his case. Here is the occasion of that sonnet as told in Milnes’ Life and Letters of John Keats and quoted in the introduction to the John Russell Smith edition below:
Mr. Monckton Milnes, in his “Life and Letters of John Keats,” (vol. i. p. 18. ed. 1848,) says, “Unable as he was to read the original Greek, Homer had as yet been to him a name of solemn significance and nothing more. His friend and literary counsellor, Mr. Clarke, happened to borrow Chapman’s translation, and having invited Keats to read it with him one evening, they continued their study till daylight. He describes Keats’ delight as intense, even to shouting aloud, as some passages of especial energy struck his imagination. It was fortunate that he was introduced to that heroic company through an interpretation which preserves so much of the ancient simplicity, and in a metre that, after all various attempts, including that of the hexameter, still appears the best adapted, from its pauses and its length, to represent in English, the Greek epic verse.… The Sonnet, in which these his first impressions are concentrated, was left the following day on Mr. Clarke’s table.”
Homer’s Iliad. Translated by George Chapman. With an introduction by Henry Morley. Second edition. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1886.
1884 edition.
Another copy of the 1884 edition.
Homer’s Iliad. Translated by George Chapman. With twenty-four illustrations designed by Henry Motte, printed in heliogravure. With an introduction by Henry Morley, LL.D. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1887.
The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, never before in any language truly translated, with a comment on some of his chief places. Done according to the Greek by George Chapman. With introduction and Notes, by the Rev. Richard Hooper, M.A. Third edition. London: John Russell Smith, 1888, 1898.
Homer’s Batrachomyomachia, Hymns and Epigrams. Hesiod’s Works and Days. Musæus’ Hero and Leander. Juvenal’s Fifth Satire. With introduction and notes by Richard Hooper. Second edition, to which is added a glossarial index to the whole of the works of Chapman’s classical translations. London: John Russell Smith, 1888.
Another copy.
The Odysseys of Homer. Translated according to the Greek by George Chapman.
The Works of George Chapman: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Edited, with notes, by Richard Herne Shepherd. A new impression. London: Chatto & Windus, 1924. —Printed in two columns, which is perhaps not ideal for Chapman’s fourteeners.
The Shakespeare Head edition of Chapman’s Homer, 1931. Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1931. —This edition reproduces the spelling and typography of the original, except for the long S and the use of U and V. These scans are from the Public Library of India, whose scans are not the best but often make available books that American and European librarians are not willing to put on line.
I. The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets. never before in any language truely translated. With a comment upon some of his chiefe places; donne according to the Greeke by George Chapman. Books I to XII.
II. The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets. never before in any language truely translated. With a comment upon some of his chiefe places; donne according to the Greeke by George Chapman. Books XIII to XXIV.
III. Homer’s Odysses. Translated according to the Greeke by Geo: Chapman. Books I–XII.
IV. Homer’s Odysses. Translated according to the Greeke by Geo: Chapman. Books XIII–XXIV.
V. The Crowne of All Homer’s Workes, Batrachomyomachia, or the Battaille of Frogs & Mise. His Hymns & Epigrams. Translated according to the originall by George Chapman.
Homer’s Odyssey. A line-for-line translation in the metre of the original by H. B. Cotterill M.A. With twenty-four illustrations by Patten Wilson. London: George G. Harrap & Company, 1911.
The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, translated into English blank verse, by W. Cowper, of the Inner Temple, esq. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1791.
Vol. I. Containing the Iliad.
Vol. II. Containing the Odyssey, and the Battle of the Frogs and Mice.
The Iliad of Homer, in English hexameter verse. By J. Henry Dart, M.A. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1865. —Much better than you might expect from the total oblivion into which this translation has fallen.
Another copy.
The Iliads and Odysses of Homer. Translated out of Greek into English. By Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. With a large preface concerning the virtues of an heroic poem, written by the translator. London: Longmans, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844. —Part of a set of Hobbes’ English works. Hobbes’ Homer is eccentric and worth hearing, like everything from Hobbes.
The Iliad of Homer done into English prose by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. London: Macmillan and Co., 1883.
The Odyssey of Homer done into English prose by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1883.
The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English verse by William Morris. London: Reeves & Turner, 1887.
The Iliad of Homer. Faithfully translated into unrhymed English metre, by Francis W. Newman. London: Trübner & Co., 1871. —The meter is blank fourteeners, and it seems appropriate.
Homer: The Iliad; or, Achilles’ Wrath; at the Siege of Ilion. Reproduced in dramatic blank verse. By T. S. Norgate. London: Williams and Norgate, 1864.
The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by George Herbert Palmer. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894. —A prose translation.
Pope’s translation is so ubiquitous that it will not be necessary to multiply copies here. We have chosen these editions especially for the quality of the scans.
The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Alexander Pope, Esq. A new edition, with illustrative notes, selected from the edition published by Gilbert Wakefield, B.A. London: Printed for [seven lines of booksellers in small capitals], 1817. —An attractive edition in “modern” type, with excellent OCR.
Vol. I. Essay on Homer; General View of the Epick Poem; General Observations; books I–V.
Vol. II. Books VI–XVI.
Vol. III. Books XVII–XXIV, indexes.
The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Alexander Pope, Esq. A new edition, with illustrative notes, selected from the edition published by Gilbert Wakefield, B.A. London: Printed for [seven lines of booksellers in small capitals], 1817. —Companion to the edition above.
Vol. I. Books I–XII.
Vol. II. Books XIII–XIV; Postscript; index; Battle of the Frogs and Mice; Hymn to Ceres.
Homer’s Iliad. Translated from the original Greek into English hexameters. By Edwin W. Simcox. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1865. —Not nearly as good as Dart’s hexameter translation above; both appeared in the same year.
The Odyssey of Homer. Translated into English verse by Philip Stanhope Worsley, M.A. New edition. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1895.
The Iliad of Homer, translated into English Prose, as literally as the different idioms of the Greek and English languages will allow; with explanatory notes. By a graduate of the University of Oxford. First American, from the fourth London edition. Princeton: George Thompson, 1847.