The Booke of Ovyde Named Methamorphose

"In this marvellous edition of William Caxton's Booke of Ovyde Named Methamorphose, Richard Moll has made available one of the most neglected texts produced by England's famous printer. Existing in a single manuscript that was split in two parts and lost until its rediscovery in the 1960s, the Ovyde has garnered little critical attention. Yet as the first Englishing of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Caxton's translation paved the way for later versions of a work that influenced nearly every medieval and Renaissance writer. Moll very ably embeds the Ovyde in the complicated history of French verse models and prose commentaries that preceded it. His fine introduction also slyly refocuses our attention on Caxton's role as a translator who painstakingly grappled with texts before ushering them into print. In doing so Moll has not only expanded the history of the English Ovidian tradition but has also made an important contribution to our understanding of Caxton." -Jenny Adams, University of Massachusetts Amherst