In a little-known, deeply allegorical poem ‘Euthymiae Raptus, or The Tears of Peace’ (1609), the poet George Chapman describes an encounter with the ghost of Homer. The scene calls to mind the long line of encounters between poets and their dead mentors, from Dante's meeting with Virgil in Canto 1 of The Divine Comedy to Eliot's with the ‘familiar compound ghost’ of ‘Little Gidding’. The ghost identifies itself to Chapman thus:

This obscure passage describes what is in fact an important moment in English literature, for what Chapman meant by the phrase ‘thou didst english me’ goes far beyond the act of translating the Iliad and the Odyssey from Greek into English. Elsewhere, in a poem ‘To the Reader ’ with which he prefaces his translation of the Iliad, Chapman enjoins the reader to ‘love’ Homer ‘as born in England: see him over-shine | All other-country poets …’ (ll. 198–9). What is happening in these passages is that he is appropriating the Greek poet Homer into the English literary canon.

Why is this important to us now? ‘Of all books extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best,’ Chapman wrote in yet another preface to the Iliad. And, as if in confirmation of this judgement, he has been ‘english'd’ since Chapman by many translators in successive generations, up to and including our own. Those Englishings are the subject of this book.

Within the limits of works in translation, Homer was by no means ‘the first’.