The Metamorphoses

This landmark translation of Ovid was acclaimed by Ezra Pound as 'the most beautiful book in the language (my opinion and I suspect it was Shakespeare's)'. Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends in which men and women are transformed – often by love – into flowers, trees, stones and stars. Golding's robustly vernacular version was the first major English translation and decisively influenced Shakespeare, Spenser and the character of English Renaissance writing. About The Author Publius Ovidus Naso was born in 43 BC in central Italy. He was sent to Rome where he realised that his talent lay with poetry rather than with politics. His first published work was 'Amores', a collection of short love poems. However he was expelled in AD 8 by Emperor Augustus for an unknown reason. He went to Tomis on the Black Sea where he died in AD 17.