The Odyssey [Kindle Edition]

Homer (Author), Alexander Pope (Author, Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 452 KB
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Public Domain Books (April 1, 2002)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000JQU9VA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #195 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #16 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fiction Classics

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

198 of 205 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the best adaptation for the Kindle, October 31, 2009

By 

T. Simons (Columbia, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Odyssey (Kindle Edition)

This is Alexander Pope's verse translation of the Odyssey, first published in 1726, glommed into a kindle edition. It is not formatted for the Kindle and is thus very difficult to read -- instead of stanzas, it's all oddly-broken chunks that vaguely resemble paragraphs, presumably an artifact of whatever software was used to scan the original text. To add to that, it's poetry *by Alexander Pope*, and thus largely in heroic couplets, deliberately archaic even to the ear of Pope's 18th-century contemporaries, with "thou"s scattered throughout -- there's a reason that William Wordsworth thought Pope's poetry archaic and artificial.

As this is a "kindle bestseller" but there aren't any other listed reviews, I suspect a lot of people are (like myself) downloading this for their kindles because it shows up readily in a search for "Odyssey", and then getting stymied by the five-hundred-"location" introductory essay (written, as best I can tell, in the early 1800's, and thus hopelessly outdated by little things like two hundred year's worth of Homerian scholarship, Schliemann's discovery of Troy, etc.) and the near-impenetrable arrangement of the text. If anyone can find a better-formatted free-download kindle version of the Odyssey (perhaps a prose translation?) please link me to it in a comment. Thanks.

74 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Free, Folks, February 2, 2010

By 

Terri J. Rice "ricepaper" (WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Odyssey (Kindle Edition)

This Kindle download is difficult to figure out. It begins with a very lengthy introduction by Theodore Alois Buckley, which might cause you to think you had downloaded a critique of the Odyssey and not the actual story. That is not so.


The actual translation of the Odyssey begins at 8% on the Kindle: "O Muse! resound; Who when his arms had wrougt the destined fall of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall, wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd..."

"Now at their native realms the Greeks arrived; all who the wars of ten long years survived; and scaped the perils of the gulfy main."

It is the translation by Alexander Pope and you either like his translation or you don't; there are, I believe, easier ones to understand.

Buckley says,"It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope's translation by our own advancing knowledge of the original text. We must content to look at it as a most delightful work in itself,-- a work which is as much a part of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek."

The Kindle edition has what I consider a major problem:

There is no Table of Contents so you can not jump to a particular book which is very unfortunate because when studying the book you want to do exactly that. The fix would be to add a Bookmark every time you come to a new book so that you can easily go back and forth. But that, obviously, would mean you have to read through the whole book bookmarking as you go which is why I gave this a four star instead of five star review for this Kindle edition.

But... it is free and free is a very good price.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Free Good Translation-4 in a Half Stars, November 27, 2010

By 

kimcsw (Florida) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Odyssey (Kindle Edition)

I too like some of the reviewers was close to removing this free edition from my Kindle as I began to wonder when The Odyssey would begin. It starts at 8 % or location 413 on the third Kindle type size. The first 8% is a biography of Homer and a critique of Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's The Odyssey. I found the biography interesting and The Odyssey itself is a great Greek epic. A linked table of contents would have been nice and a page break between the foreword and the start of the actual work would have been appreciated. So I take off a star for that. With Kindle's bookmarking, highlighting, note adding feature, and search feature you can quickly find and go anywhere though from your Kindle menu so the point becomes moot. Then I add a half star back for it was free anyways.