Divine Comedy

Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri, Henry Francis Cary (Translator), Umberto Romano (Illustrator)
Publisher: Doubleday & Company
©1947, Item: 81608
Hardcover, 475 pages
Not in stock

This translation by Henry Francis Cary is rarely read today but was quite popular at the beginning of the 19th century. Published in a one-volume edition by Doubleday and accompanied by illustrations by Umberto Romano, it includes the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso all rendered in blank verse without any attempt to reproduce Dante's triple-rhyme. Instead, the Anglican clergyman focused on accuracy and faithfulness to the original, and the resulting translation is very formal but still highly readable. Cary's translation is the one that made The Divine Comedy popular to English poets like Keats, Blake, and others.

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