Published by Norton in November 2017, Emily Wilson’s line-for-line iambic pentameter version of The Odyssey is the first English translation by a woman. It has been called “a lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer’s 'nimble gallop' and brings an ancient epic to new life.
Wilson is a Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. She has a BA from Oxford in Classics, an M. Phil., also from Oxford, in English Literature (1500-1660), and a Ph.D. from Yale in Classics and Comparative Literature. Her first book was Mocked with Death: Tragic over living from Sophocles to Milton (Johns Hopkins, 2004). Her second book was The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Harvard UP 2007). Her third was Seneca: A Life (also published in the US as The Greatest Empire, Penguin/ OUP USA, 2015). She has published verse translations of Seneca's Tragedies (Oxford World's Classics) Euripides, The Greek Plays (Modern Library Random House), and The Odyssey (Norton, fall 2017). Other publications include various chapters and articles on the reception of classical literature in English literature, and reviews in the TLS LRB. She is the classics editor for the revised Norton Anthology of World Literature, and Western Literature.