"Eight Books of Homer's Odyssey; with Introduction, Commentary, and Vocabulary for the Use of Schools" by Bernadotte Perrin and Thomas Day Seymour, published by Ginn and Company, 1897.

Hard boards, original cloth with red lettering on spine, 5.1/2" x 8.1/4"; "Margueritte Hubbard" is ink written on the front endpaper, separate pagination: Introduction (lxviii pages) + Odyssey in original Greek (156 pages) + map + Commentary (88 pages) + Greek – English Vocabulary (107 pages), c.20 pages with pencil notes (easy to erase), very good condition.

Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. Both works attributed to Homer - "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" - are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer must have had an amazing memory but was helped by the formulaic poetry style of the time.

In "The Iliad" Homer sang of death and glory, of a few days in the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. "The Odyssey" is the original collection of tall traveler's tales. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope.

We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. In fact 'Homer' may not be a real name but a kind of nickname meaning perhaps 'the hostage' or 'the blind one'. Whatever the truth of their origin, the two stories, developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years' time.

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